


Making Their Own Heroes

by slythernim



Series: Harry Potter Without Harry Potter [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Durmstrang, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-18 17:34:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 27
Words: 56,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19339288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slythernim/pseuds/slythernim
Summary: Suppose Tom Riddle never bothers to show mercy, and Harry Potter dies with his parents? What would that mean for the world, to have no Boy-Who-Lived to save them? ("A couple of stubborn kids" just doesn't have the same ring to it.)Year 1: Ron Weasley is not as alone as you might expect.





	1. The Prophecy

_January 2nd, 1980_

_S.P.T. to A.P.W.B.D_

_Dark Lord and (?) Harry J. Potter_

* * *

* * *

**THE ONE WITH THE POWER TO VANQUISH THE DARK LORD APPROACHES**

**BORN TO THOSE WHO HAVE THRICE DEFIED HIM**

**BORN AS THE SEVENTH MONTH DIES**

**HE SHALL HAVE POWER THE DARK LORD KNOWS NOT**

**AND EACH SHALL DIE AT THE HAND OF THE OTHER**

**FOR NEITHER CAN LIVE WHILE THE OTHER DIES**

**AND NEITHER CAN DIE WHILE THE OTHER YET LIVES**

**THE ONE WITH THE POWER TO VANQUISH THE DARK LORD WILL BE BORN AS THE SEVENTH MONTH DIES**

* * *

* * *

 


	2. The Marauders, Shattered

Lily Potter liked to pretend she knew everything.

She did, after all, know a great many things.

She knew how to drive a car and how to brew a perfect Calming Draught and exactly how many pages there were in  _Hogwarts, A History_ and which foot to stand on if you were casting shield spells against bombardment versus against curses. She knew how to operate a pay telephone and how to get to Diagon Alley with your fingertips if you've forgotten your wand, and she knew her sister hated her for it. (She also knew how to pretend not to care.) She knew how many times an average witch or wizard could Apparate in a day and how high they'd bounce from, and how to fix them when they didn't.

Lily Potter knew perfectly well she was in a great deal of danger.

After all, the Dark Lord was personally trying to kill them. James had thought it flattering, up until he found out it meant he had to hide, instead of fight. It had taken her weeks to convince him this was the right decision, though it might have gone more smoothly if she hadn't been trying to convince herself at the same time. Even now he still kept asking, over and over.

"Why are we  _here_ , Lily? Why can't we do  _something_?" he would say.

She knew the answer, though she didn't like it.  _He_ knew the answer, too, but she didn't begrudge him his frustration. "Because it's not just us," she would explain, again. "It's Harry that's in danger, too." She didn't mind answering it over and over, because she needed the reminder. She sometimes suspected that James was doing it on purpose, because he knew she was frustrated too, and he was afraid she might run back outside to the battlefield, to fight. (She might have, even, if she hadn't known he would follow.) It was easy to pretend, when you were behind a Fidelius Charm, that you were not in danger. Little Pete would never betray them, and he shouldn't need to fight, they hoped; no one would even consider that they hadn't made Sirius the Secret-Keeper. So long as they stayed put and didn't do anything stupid,  _they_ were perfectly safe ( _keep telling yourself that, maybe that'll make it true_ ).

"Right," James said, flat, unconvinced but trying to force conviction out of his words. Harry was important.

But even if she could convince herself  _they_ were safe, that James was safe, that her baby was safe - she couldn't not know that everyone else was in danger, too. James' best friend Sirius was in a great deal more danger than they were, actually, and  _that_  fact, she couldn't even pretend not to know, not with all the acting skills in the world. Not when James paced and cursed and threw things. Not when he scribbled Transfiguration notes all over the newspaper - all battle spells - and then scribbled it all out and set it aflame. Not when he hovered over that mirror of his, thrumming with tension, waiting to hear a voice that was sharp and sardonic and infinitely reassuring ( _"Chill your shit, Prongs, I'm not dead yet"_ ), never quite relaxing even to sleep. She could pretend they were safe here, but she could not pretend that a war did not rage outside their little cottage. It was impossible; Lily knew.

But if she were aware, then she had to know, too, that James sitting here making smoke-rings for Harry was a waste. When there was a war it didn't matter whether they were safe here, he ought to have been off with Sirius, wreaking havoc among the Death Eaters. He ought to have been fighting, and so should she. And so no matter how safe she could convince herself they were, she still had to cope with that little voice in her head, the one that said,  _What could possibly go wrong?_ , and wanted to know - she could never stand not  _knowing_  - why they were sitting here. Sitting here while Sirius was fighting. While Remus and Peter and Emmeline and Edgar and Marlene (no, not Marlene,  _don't think about Marlene_ ) fought a war.  _Dumbledore's orders,_  she would have to tell herself, over and over again, and she trusted Dumbledore, of course she did, but his orders seemed hollow when people were (maybe) ( _please no_ ) dying.

It was impossible to pretend. But what else could she do?

So Lily sang a little lullabye for her son, and pretended anyway.

Abruptly, jarringly, there was a terrible crunching sound, like a wooden matchbox car collapsing against concrete.

For a moment she wondered, incongruously, whether her husband had any idea what "concrete" was; and then she hadn't any time to wonder anything of the sort, as the door flew off its hinges. Then, in a horrible moment of clarity, Lily  _knew_ without a shadow of doubt that she was going to die. She pushed it off to the back of her mind;  _not helpful_ , she told her brain.  _What do I do?_ _  
_

Lily knew that James was itching for a fight. It'd been months, months of him pacing and writing spells and rewriting spells and rearranging the entire house with magic, because he was  _bored -_ he'd never been meant for peace, her stupid Quidditch hero turned soldier. So that meant that he was going to do something reckless and stupid and impossibly brave. She knew that, like she knew everything else, and she hated knowing, suddenly. It would almost have been better not to know; all the knowledge in the world wouldn't have meant she would be able to stop him. James was on his feet in a second, wand in hand, and it was much too late to tell him not to be a hero.

"Lily, it's him, run!" he shouted, because he was facing the door and she was not, though really it was just confirmation; who else could it be? As she, too, leapt from her chair and swept Harry off the ground, walls were coming out of the floor and objects were flying across the room. James was making barriers - nothing fancy, not those dramatic sweeping iron things he used to use against Death Eaters, just big blocks of material, because there wasn't time - and they were shattering as fast as he could make them. (How long before he runs out of things to Transfigure, and a Killing Curse goes right through those Shield Charms? _Don't think about it._ ) "Take Harry and go!" he was saying - and she'd been expecting it but still she thought  _damn you, come with me_  - "I'll hold him off!"

Lily knew that James was going to die if he stayed. It was a foregone conclusion. She knew, too, that they might both live longer if she fought; her arsenal of curses ( _don't think about Sev_ ) might buy James entire minutes. They might have a chance - they might be able to hold out until the Order showed up. They'd done it before, more than once, even. Maybe they shouldn't have, maybe it had made them a target -  _those who have thrice defied him_ , her mind supplied, a fuzzy memory of Dumbledore's grim voice - but they  _had_ done it, they could do it again, live to fight another day ...

But Harry was a target, and more importantly, he was a target who couldn't duck.

And so she ran.

Behind her she could hear the horrible high-pitched laughter of the Dark Lord, and her husband throwing spells as fast as he could and she knew, she  _knew_ , it couldn't possibly be fast enough. James was an impossibly skilled fighter, but he was no match for Voldemort, not alone. She wished she didn't know that, that she could lie to herself and believe he would be fine, but she knew. She ought to help him, she  _wanted_ to help him, more than she'd ever wanted anything in her life ... But she'd promised, she'd promised she'd keep Harry safe, and as the tears poured down her face, she ran. She was reciting under her breath the words to every protection charm she knew, because even if there wasn't really a point ( _I am going to die)_  she had to at least  _try ..._

Harry was crying, too.

"Shhh, shhh, sweetheart, everything's going to be fine," she lied, and she was almost to the back door when she heard the voice. She was  _so close_ , the edge of the wards was  _right there,_ but she'd have to  _turn_ to Apparate, put Harry right in the path of a curse -

"Give me the boy," hissed Lord Voldemort, and Lily knew James was dead.

"No!" she said on reflex, and without even really making any conscious decision, she was wrapped around her son. She was a fighter, sure, but she'd never been as good as James, she was really a Healer like Frank ( _oh god he and Alice are probably going to die too_ ) and so the part of her brain that still worked logically told her firmly that fighting would not work. She'd already cast every protection charm she could think of on Harry, even the experimental ones she and Remus had been working on that hadn't been tested properly. And so the only option left was to plead. "No, please, not Harry, please, don't, kill me instead, not Harry - " Her baby was crying and Lily could not help him, she could do  _nothing_ , and that broke her heart, and all she could do was beg, even though she knew it would do her son no good.

(Lily Potter knew a lot of things, but in the end it had done her no good.)

Voldemort's laugh, high and derisive, sounded in her ears as her vision swam. "You are a fool," he told her. "Did you suppose that I would kill you and leave, because you asked?" A cruel smile curved his mouth. "It is really rather unfortunate. Severus will be sad.  _Avada kedavra_!"

And Lily Potter knew no more.

* * *

Sirius stood in the hallway of Peter's little hideout with a sick feeling in his gut. He'd only gone to check, no real reason. He'd had a free moment, and he hadn't checked on Peter in awhile; he kept forgetting that he couldn't trust Remus to do it anymore. Not since the screaming match after the last Order meeting, during which they had gone through an entire laundry list of slurs at one another -  _halfblood inbred liar self-absorbed werewolf murderer traitor traitor traitor -_ and which Remus had ended by telling him to stay away from James and completely ruining Sirius' comeback by Disapparating on the spot. (Sometimes Sirius hated magic.) Only, no one had answered when he knocked on Peter's door, so he'd let himself in with the spare key, figuring he'd find Peter asleep, maybe make the poor sod some tea and steal his  _Daily Prophet._

There were no signs of a struggle here, nothing broken. One might be excused for thinking nothing was wrong; the linens were neatly folded (persnickety creature, Peter Pettigrew), the dishes were washed and stacked. The door was intact, the lock was still functioning, the raggedy furniture was all in its place. Nothing was scuffed, nothing was so much as jostled. And yet - the fridge was empty, the fireplace was cold. The armchair by the fire was covered in a very thin layer of dust. Nothing had been disturbed, probably for  _days_.

And Peter was gone.

" _Shit_ ," he said aloud, and the sound echoed strangely in the silence.

He turned and bolted out the door again, not bothering to lock it behind him.

Mentally he thanked Caradoc Dearborn for forcing him to practice Apparating with his bike; otherwise he'd have spent hours flying to Godric's Hollow, or lost precious minutes running the distance from the edge of the anti-Apparition wards. As it was he left the street outside Peter's flat building with an echoing  _crack_  and landed already moving, accelerating through the gate. His mirror was back at his flat, it was fragile and he spent way too much time getting blown into walls for that to be a good idea, but suddenly he desperately wished he had it, because he was losing seconds. Very suddenly, he felt like he understood  _exactly_ why James was always so twitchy when he was late getting back from a fight. At least the bike traveled fast. Faster than a broomstick, or he would never have bothered.

As the Fidelius Charm shimmered and the house appeared before him, he saw that this door, unlike Peter's, had been broken down.

"No," said Sirius, as if saying it could make it not true, " _no_."

He was running, jumping off the bike without regard for brakes and letting it skid across the driveway. He'd forgotten about it by the time he reached the steps, praying to any god who might listen,  _please no -_

And he froze in the doorway.

There wasn't any furniture anymore, or at least none that was still  _shaped_ like furniture. There were barely-Euclidean shapes scattered everywhere, half-Transfigured shields blown to pieces. The debris of the kind of fight that few people walked away from - Sirius could count on one hand the people he knew to be capable of Transfiguration combat, and have two fingers left. Dumbledore and McGonagall, both at Hogwarts this very moment, probably smiling hollowly and discussing tactics over their Halloween feast ... and James Potter. Which meant (no) James had had to fight ( _no_ ) and hadn't been able to put everything back together again afterwards ( _no no no_ ) -

\- and there he was, crumpled on the ground in a way that bodies just didn't bend when they were alive. "No," said Sirius, this time out loud. He heard his voice break, and didn't care. "No, no, no - " as if denying it would help, but James' eyes were open and glassy and empty, and shaking him would not wake him up, no matter how much he begged. This wasn't supposed to happen, this was the whole reason Sirius was fighting, this was why he went around bragging that the Potters had made  _him_  their Secret-Keeper and daring the Death Eaters to come after him (don't pay attention to Peter), to prevent exactly this from happening. How -  _how -_

And then it hit him, like the speeding Hogwarts Express.

Don't mention Peter, Peter's not important, we never think of Peter,  _I forgot about -_ "Peter." The little bastard. Not Remus at all, not the obvious spy, of course it wasn't the obvious spy. They'd spent half an hour screaming at each other and it had been  _Wormtail_ all along, scurrying off, saying nothing. Not the werewolf (too much a librarian), not the Black (too much a Gryffindor). The boy who turned into a rat because he liked to know things, because he liked people's secrets, because he  _liked to be a spy ..._  how had they not noticed? How had they not  _seen -_

"Sirius!" said a voice, and he very nearly hit Rubeus Hagrid squarely in the stomach with a Cutting Hex that would have been neck height on an ordinary man. He cut off the reflexive motion just in time, eyes wide with adrenaline, as he wheeled to see the Hogwarts gamekeeper emerge from the blown-out hole of the upper floors, looking grimmer than Sirius had thought he was capable of. "Ya heard?"

"Hagrid," said Sirius, in a rather shaky voice, "Where're Lily and Harry?"

The look on the half-giant's face told him all he needed to know.

He turned and ran. He'd forgotten completely about his bike, he just ran down the steps and down the drive and out the gate, letting the house fade behind him ( _maybe if you don't think about it it won't have happened),_ and running faster than he could remember ever running before. He didn't even know where he was going; he just knew that if he stopped he'd probably just curl up in a ball of self-loathing and never move again. Where  _could_ he go? James was dead. Lily was dead. Harry was dead. The anchors around which his world revolved were gone. What was he going to  _do_ with his life? There was no point in fighting this stupid war anymore, the Potters were dead and Remus hated him and Peter -

Oh.

Peter was going to die.

That was what drove him, then, after his panic ran out and was taken over by murder.

_Have to find Peter._

Peter was going to die.

_Run._

Sirius was going to kill him.

_Run._

Sirius was going to rip the traitor's heart out through his ribcage and blast it to bits.

_Stop crying and run._

Sirius did not have time for crying.

_Run._

Peter was going to die.

_What have you done?_

Sirius did not have time to think about how stupid it had been for him to suggest this plan. He should have just done it himself, he shouldn't have tried to be clever. He shouldn't have let his desire to keep being involved rule him; he should have done the Fidelius and locked himself in a room and not come out until the war was over and James and Lily and Harry were safe. Should have, should have, should have.

_You're a murderer, Sirius Black._

He'd killed people before, in battle. You couldn't avoid it, in a war like this. It wasn't even illegal, not with an Auror badge. He'd never enjoyed it - fighting was fun until it was over, and then you stood around panting and bleeding and counting dead bodies to make your report to Director Crouch. That part was always the worst; he and James had gotten horribly drunk after the first time they'd had to do it, and Remus had made them tea in the morning and not said a word.

Edgar Bones always used to say that it was only murder if you didn't schedule it first. (Bureaucratic arse. Sirius missed him.)

So Sirius had murdered the Potters; they weren't supposed to die and it was his fault that they had.

Sirius was going to murder Peter, and he was going to enjoy every second of it.

_Run, murderer, run._

In the future, when asked, he would never be able to explain how, exactly, he'd found Peter Pettigrew. But he found him, all the same. There was probably magic involved, for all that he didn't remember doing any. He must have done tracking spells, and anti-Apparition jinxes, and any number of things, to catch a wizard who didn't want to be found. Conspiracy theorists would later use it as so-called proof that the event had been preplanned, because tracking spells were extremely obscure and extremely complicated and had to be tuned to a person through extended effort. Remus Lupin, for his part, would later feel guilty about teaching Sirius to do it, years ago, with Peter as a practice target. But Sirius didn't know and never would; he only remembered the running.

Sirius found Peter in the middle of a Muggle street. There were Muggles all around, already turning to look at the man sprinting through their midst. This was a blatant breach of the International Statute of Secrecy, but he found that he didn't care in the slightest. He was so far past caring that he barely even registered that there were Muggles around. They could be Obliviated, they could die for all he cared, he had to kill Peter, Peter had to die, Peter was  _going to die for this_  -

"Lily and James, Sirius?" shrieked Peter, "how could you?"

Sirius actually stopped, frozen with his wand raised, and stared. Sheer bafflement crossed his face, so powerful that it overrode his fury for just a split second, before his arrested motion continued. A split second, however was just long enough, or just slightly too long. A split second later, while Sirius was still wide-eyed with shock, Peter exploded, and the entire street with him.

Sirius burst out laughing.

It was too much; there was only so much stress a man's mind could take before he didn't  _have_ any other responses. There was too much adrenaline in his body for him to collapse, and too little energy to do anything else. He'd never imagined he would be the last one alive. He'd always assumed it would be Remus and Lily, competent and sane and eminently responsible, who would outlive the rest of their cohort. His whole life had been built around the Marauders, and then the Potters; even had he been conscious enough to make decisions, he wouldn't have known what to do, where to go. He might have tried to kill himself, except that some part of him refused to go out the same way as Peter had. So he stood there, awash in the blood of innocent bystanders, and laughed.

When the Aurors found Sirius, he was still standing there, trapped in his own hysteria.

_You're a murderer, Sirius Black._


	3. Day After Next

Minerva McGonagall was looking at him with a terrible, sad expression.

Albus dearly wished he could do something about that. There were a lot of things he wished he could do something about, frankly, but he was not nearly as omniscient as everyone seemed to think he was. He could not bring people back from the dead, he could not make his students stop being heroes. He could not, though he wished with all his might that he could, smile and tell Minerva it was all a mistake, that the Potters were alive after all and a one-year-old boy and his parents had not been murdered twelve hours ago in cold blood. How dearly he wished it had not happened, for all that he had known it was coming. He had, perhaps selfishly, hoped that at least one of the parents would live - though he knew that neither Lily nor James would have wanted to outlive the rest of their little family. All he could do was say, "I'm so sorry, Minerva."

She sighed, like she'd been hoping for something better but not really expected it. "The entire wizarding world is in an uproar, of course," the Deputy Headmistress said. Fireworks everywhere. And the defeat of Lord Voldemort had been the headline of the Evening  _Prophet._  You couldn't avoid it, not when Albus and Rubeus Hagrid had delivered  _four_ bodies to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement for burial - the three Potters and the Dark Lord. The people on duty had all started crying and cheering more or less simultaneously, and the reporters had found out almost instantly. "Everyone knows that the Potters are heroes," Minerva continued unhappily, "of course everyone's heard that they killed Voldemort, but no one seems to recall that they're  _dead_ , Albus." As well he knew. Dead and gone, never to return. Two of the brightest students he'd seen in years, strong and courageous and righteous, everything Godric Gryffindor had wanted in his students ... snuffed out in a heartbeat, like candles left out in the rain.

The headmaster managed a wise smile, though it was shaky. "They will never truly die," he said, as firmly as he could, "not so long as we remember them." He believed that, though maybe only because he might have gone mad decades ago if he didn't.  _You didn't kill me_ , said Gellert's voice in the back of his head,  _what does that say about all your pretty words, hmm?_ (Sometimes he wondered, to himself, if killing the old Dark Lord would silence his voice, or make it louder.)  _  
_

"But that poor little boy..." sighed Minerva sadly. Harry Potter had been only a year old, and despite being a child of prophecy, despite all the experimental shields Lily had put on him, it would seem he had died as easily as any other helpless child. Albus had checked all three wands left at the scene, and gotten a fairly clear picture of what had happened. James' indicated a protracted duel, and Lily's had cast a veritable battery of protective charms, including some they hadn't yet tested properly, or at all. She must have been desperate. And she had reason; Voldemort's wand's last three spells had been three Killing Curses, in quick succession. Lily had been protecting Harry until she died, not defending herself. Neither of the Potters would have been foolish enough to stick around and fight if both Harry and their partner were dead; and either of them was quick enough on their feet to get across the wardlines and Disapparate, if that had been the case.

So Harry had died last; why, then, was Voldemort dead, too? None of the Aurors had bothered to wonder. Director Crouch didn't bother with curiosity; he was too old and too tired and much too cold for that. He only did his job. Alastor and Amelia were much the same, after this long, and they'd been the ones on duty at the time. They'd barely even cheered with the rest of the department; only sighed with a sort of muted relief, and gone to do their work. But Albus did wonder, what had happened. It had to be the prophecy, but in practice, prophecies didn't have  _power_ , only predictive accuracy; there had to be a force there.  _Something_ had killed Voldemort.

Lacking any other evidence, he supposed it must have been Lily.

"I suppose it was foolish of me," said Albus aloud, with a sigh. "To assume that Harry Potter would destroy Voldemort of his own volition - or to assume that he would survive the conflict."

"Of course," said Minerva, looking annoyed, and Albus couldn't blame her, not one bit. She'd been telling him for months how absurd it was that a little boy would have anything to do with the defeat of Voldemort.  _Babies don't win wars,_  she'd told him irritably the last time they talked about it, and pushed his attention towards diagrams of strategy she'd been working on with Alastor. Lily Evans had had a bet on with Remus Lupin that there'd be time travel involved. "That's ridiculous, Albus," she repeated for the thousandth time. "I am frankly astonished that you ever believed such a thing." She was giving him a stern, reproving look now, the sort of look she gave him whenever he offered her a lemon drop in the middle of a tirade about Peeves.

"I am well aware," he said with a sigh, rubbing his temples. Of course it was ridiculous, but they did live in a world where you could go to the store and buy spinach-flavoured jelly beans and not have anyone think that was weird. By any objective measure,  _everything_ in the wizarding world was ridiculous."But the facts remain: after Lily and James died, Voldemort was sufficiently alive to kill Harry, and doing so killed him." McGonagall was giving him a very strange look, now. Well, the truth had been strange. Lily Potter and Remus Lupin had been working on some very interesting new charms in the weeks before the Potters' death (Lily hadn't believed that Remus could be a spy, and they ought to have listened to her; everyone had been too busy laughing over the time travel bet, the more fools they). Protection charms that would not just block but fight back ... Remus said they hadn't finished anything, but Lily had been desperate enough to try incomplete spells, and it was possible that something she'd done had made the Killing Curse kill both target and caster. "Some kind of terrible magic happened that night - what, we are not yet sure. But it is enough to make me wonder."

"But surely  _Harry_ didn't ... " Minerva sighed, and visibly gave up on the problem. "It doesn't matter, does it."

Albus had to admit that it didn't seem all that important, when everyone involved was dead, no matter what the cause. He would not be able to  _ask_ Lily Potter what she had done. But Voldemort was dead, and that was all that mattered, he hoped.  _If he really is dead,_  that voice in his head that sounded like Gellert needled.  _Can you be sure of that, Albus? Can you be really sure?_ Still - "I suppose not."

"It  _is_  over, then?" Minerva asked, begging with her eyes that the answer be yes, that she would be forced to watch no more of her students charge bravely into battle and die terrible deaths.  _The Prewetts, the Boneses, the McKinnons, the Potters, Peter... no more, please, Albus, no more,_ she was saying. They had all been so young.

But he shook his head, because he had to, and so he had to watch as she despaired. "There are Death Eaters still, Minerva," he said. In his ears his voice sounded old, and tired. But cutting off the head would not kill the snake, not quickly enough. Death Eaters would panic, and panic meant violence. There would be fighting, and chasing, and yet more death, before they could begin to relax and rebuild and perhaps properly grieve. Albus stood, stretching his aging bones, and sighed again. "There is work yet to do."

(And amid that work, and the Longbottoms the next day, and yet more work, he never did go back to the Potter cottage in Godric's Hollow. Many years in the future, he would wish that he had.)

* * *

Albus Dumbledore really wished that people would stop expecting him to solve all of their problems. Everyone seemed to think he was capable of the impossible, and as a result he found himself spending all too much time staring at problems he didn't actually have any idea how to fix. It was painful, to do that all the time. Sometimes there was nothing you could really do. Sometimes you had to tell Amelia Bones that her little brother was dead, and there was no way to make that hurt less. Sometimes you had to take Alice and Frank Longbottom to St. Mungo's and the Lestranges to Azkaban, when Azkaban would never be punishment enough. And sometimes ... well, sometimes you promised reluctant Death Eaters you'd help them, and failed. 

"What do I do now, Headmaster?" asked Severus Snape, standing in the doorway of his office, looking lost.

 _What can any of us do?_ he wondered. 

_How are you the one that survived, Severus? Out of all the students in your graduating class. Half are dead and half are in Azkaban, and ... you._

He suspected Severus was wondering the same thing. This had never been a boy who expected to survive the war. He'd probably had grand plans to throw himself dramatically at Lily Evans' feet and die for her. He'd turned spy for selfish reasons and not expected to survive the experience; but he  _had_ done it, and so Albus had spoken on his behalf before the Wizengamot, and here he was, with nothing to do with his life.

"I don't know, Severus," he said heavily, because he didn't. And then, because there was nothing else to say, he said, "I am sorry for your loss."

"Sorry?" hissed the ex-Death Eater, his wand hand curling into a fist. His whole face curled around his anger. It was almost intimidating, but mostly it was terribly sad. "I threw myself at your feet and begged, and  _you didn't save her_ , headmaster, you didn't even  _try_."

Albus sighed. You'd think he'd never failed a single task in his life, the way people assumed he could do anything. "I assure you I tried," he said sadly. His voice sounded so old. When had he gotten old? "I am not God, Severus."

"You should be!" Severus snapped.

There was a heavy silence, during which Albus gazed steadily at his former student and waited patiently for the storm to pass. Severus glared at him, shaking; and then, abruptly, he collapsed heavily in the chair in front of the headmaster's desk. It was like watching a tree in the Forest, struck by lightning, crumble into so much burnt dust.

"I'm sorry," the young man said quietly, "that was uncalled for."

"It was," agreed Albus, steepling his fingers on the desk and willing his headache to go away. It didn't, so he instead tried to ignore it. Then, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, he had an idea. "Professor Slughorn is retiring this year," he said, as gently as he could. Severus had always been good with potions, and maybe a steady job would be good for him. Maybe  _people_ would be good for him. Maybe anything would be good for him, really, that wasn't sitting alone in his mother's vacant house, wishing the world had been different. Maybe this was a terrible suggestion, but Albus really  _did_ need someone to do it. "Perhaps you would consent to be his replacement?"

Severus shrugged. "It's not as though I have anything better to do with my life," he said bitterly, glaring at the desk.

"Stop that," said Albus sharply, giving his old student a stern look. The effect was mostly lost, since Severus wasn't looking at him, but he carried on all the same. The others were dead or gone, but if he said the right words, perhaps  _this_ student could be saved. And so he had to try. "There is always something to do with your life," he said, and then, "Make it so that Lily Potter's sacrifice was not in vain." Make it so that  _someone_ from your generation actually survives this mess.  _Please_. "I hope and pray that Harry Potter  _was_  the prophesied child, that Voldemort is dead and gone, but if not - "

"What?" interrupted Severus, looking up at him in sudden alarm. "What do you mean, if  _not_? He's dead."

"I have learned, Severus," said Albus grimly, "never to assume." Because when you made assumptions, it would always come back to bite you. And then more people died, and Albus had too much blood on his hands already. "By all appearances Harry Potter and Voldemort killed one another that day in Godric's Hollow, thus fulfilling the prophecy - but it bothers me, perhaps more than it should, that it seemed so easy."

The expression of fury came back over Severus' face in a flash ( _what do you mean, easy_ ), and Albus shook his head quellingly.

"That's not what I mean, Severus, and you know that." The precious cost of lives was never pleasant to pay, never anything but wrenching, but it was often very easy indeed. They were so fragile, these children he had raised to fight a war. "I simply cannot shake the feeling that the child was meant to grow up, that it's not yet over." And he couldn't, not at all. It was only that there was a nagging feeling in the back of his head that said,  _You are forgetting something_ , and no matter how much he combed his Pensieve, he did not know what it was. "But for now - we must go on with our lives, Severus." Else they would spend whole lifetimes in grief, and Albus had learned long ago that grieving didn't help the people who were still alive.

Severus closed his eyes and took a deep breath, and Albus waited patiently for the man to come to terms with the situation. It was a long wait, there was a great deal to come to terms with. Severus had lost so much. He had been a Death Eater, but he was still one of Albus' students, and he had, in the end, done the right thing, if even for the wrong reasons; and so Albus would do what he could to help him. Eventually the Slytherin's eyes opened, and he looked at Albus uncertainly. "You want me to teach Potions, headmaster?" he asked, frowning. " _Teach_?"

"Certainly," said Albus, though he was far from certain. "You have always been exceptional in the subject."

Severus managed to crack a smile. Progress. "You plan to trust me with  _children_?" he asked, dramatically aghast. If there was one thing Severus Snape had had in common with James Potter other than an excessive fondness for Lily Evans, it was that hopeless, incorrigible tendency towards dramaticism.

In response, Albus's eyes twinkled mischievously. If they could joke, they could survive. "With Horace retiring, I need you!" he said. "After all, what would a magical school be, without at least one evil teacher?"

At that, Severus did laugh. It was a strained laugh, and he looked shocked at himself, but it was there. Albus beamed at him. If they could laugh, then perhaps everything would be alright.

Eventually.

* * *

 


	4. The Year That Should Have Been

"You know, you could just have me do it," said Severus for what felt like the thousandth time, sitting in the headmaster's office. It was deeply reassuring, ten years later, to see him sitting there, looking almost comfortable. Severus was never  _completely_ comfortable anywhere, but it seemed like finally he'd started to at least think of Hogwarts as his home, as somewhere he actually belonged. The shadow of Lily Potter had never quite left him, but he at least didn't dwell on it every second of the day, anymore. Among his ideas, Albus liked to think that convincing Severus Snape to be a teacher was at least one of his successful ones.

Albus sighed, again. "You know I can't do that," he said, rehearsing an old argument. He usually pointed out that Potions professors were harder to replace than Defense professors, and in ten years he'd never found anyone who could take the job he'd given Severus. The Head of Slytherin House  _would_ make a fine Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, Albus suspected, if not a happy one. Severus knew he would do it better than some of the failures they'd had of late, which was why they kept having this argument. But even if Albus  _could_ find a new Potions Master - "I need you for longer than a year, Severus."

Severus snorted disdainfully at this objection. Once he stopped being terrified of the headmaster, he'd begun to betray a rather refreshing sharp wit. It was a nice balance to Filius' persistent cheer, Pomona's quiet steadiness, and Minerva's stubborn rightness. "Oh, honestly, you cannot  _really_ believe - "

"Severus, I have not been able to keep a single Defense professor for longer than a year since I refused the position to Tom Riddle thirty years ago. Not  _one,_ " said Albus pointedly. "Yes, I  _do_  honestly believe that there is magic at work here." At first he'd thought it a simple hazard of wartime; the sort of people who could teach Defense classes were often also the sort of people who tended to get into fights with Death Eaters, trying to defend other people. Then he'd thought it a coincidence, when it kept happening, too regularly to be statistically likely. But when his sixteenth Defense teacher in sixteen years, otherwise completely competent, had somehow managed to  _burn himself to death_ , he had given up and admitted there must be some sort of outside intervention at work. (And people were starting to be wary, around then; Professor Winchester had not been the first former Auror to take the post, but he  _had_ probably been the last.)

Severus sighed, recognizing an argument he was not going to win. He chose a different tack. "But really, Headmaster,  _Quirrell_?" He spat the name with disgust, and Albus could not entirely blame him. Quirinus Quirrell was the Muggle Studies professor, or rather, he  _had_  been the Muggle Studies professor up until last year, when he had taken a sabbatical to Albania, and come back even more jumpy and frightened than before. With an irritating stammer, no less, and a pronounced fear of vampires. Perfect qualifications for a Defense professor, of course. (Sigh.)

"He is competent," said Albus, which Severus seemed to think was an overestimation. Rather pointedly, he added, "and more importantly, he is the only person I have yet found who is interested in the job."

"Except me," pointed out Severus. It wasn't that he didn't  _like_ Potions, Albus knew. He would have been delighted to teach only NEWT classes, but tended to describe his younger students as, quote,  _unconscionably stupid._ He would much prefer, he insisted, teaching a class in which he did not need to try to instruct students in anything likely to cause large explosions until at least fifth year. But as much as Severus did not believe him, Albus still suspected that his potions master would be rather unhappy as a Defense professor. Too little of his favorite subject, and too many reminders of the war.

"You," objected Albus, "are useful."

"And here I thought you merely enjoyed my company," said Severus dryly, almost rolling his eyes.  _Of course I am useful, why else would you keep me around?_ Severus still hadn't quite grasped the fact that Albus genuinely cared about his well-being. There's Slytherins, for you. "You have, at least, found someone to take up the Muggle Studies post, I trust?" Quirrell's sabbatical had been covered by Matt Savage, a diminutive and cheerful Auror who had been recovering from an injury, but the energetic wizard had refused a permanent post either in Muggle Studies or in Defense. To exactly no one's surprise, he'd headed right back to active duty the moment all his limbs were functioning correctly. "Or would you like me to be  _useful_ and teach that as well? I would be just  _delighted_."

Albus nodded, pretending he was deaf to the biting sarcasm. He was too used to the potions master's ingrained acerbity, by now, to take it very seriously. "Charity Burbage has assented to teach our Muggle Studies classes."

"I don't recognize the name," said Severus, mildly surprised. Being the Head of House Slytherin was the sort of job that forced you to have a very strong grasp of wizarding genealogy. With eyebrows rising, he asked curiously, "Did you actually manage to find a  _Muggleborn_  this time?"

Albus beamed. This had been Severus' favorite point of argument about Quirrell, who was pureblood and only slightly less baffled by Muggles than Arthur Weasley. Students' ability to pass the OWLs had tended to be rather dependent upon their ability to read their textbooks. Albus had eventually sent the professor on sabbatical when the number of complaints by Muggleborn and half-blood students had surpassed five in a single year. But this time - "I  _did,_ as a matter of fact!" he said proudly.

Severus reluctantly agreed that this was a good thing, and reassuring.

"Oh," added Albus, "but do keep an  _eye_  on Quirinius, would you?" When Quirrell had returned from his trip, he'd not quite been the  _same._  More to the point, he'd ticked about two dozen of the boxes on Mad-Eye's "Suspicious Behavior" list.

(Severus did not find  _that_  reassuring at all.)

* * *

 Remus Lupin was starting to wish he hadn't ever come back to Diagon Alley. He'd thought it might be good for him, taking in some magic, being reminded that the wizarding world did exist in places other than his dreams. Working in a Muggle library sometimes made it hard to remember. Sometimes he spent days without touching his wand, avoiding the thought, pretending Hogwarts had been a dream. After all, Remus Lupin the Muggle librarian had never seen friends shredded in front of him, had never had to attend more funerals in the course of a year than anyone should have to attend in a lifetime. But sometimes he woke up drenched in sweat and bolted to the kitchen and made tea without touching the kettle and couldn't let go of his wand for hours, terrified that it  _had_ been a dream, that all his friends were figments of his imagination. The latter had been happening more often as of late - he'd begun to wonder if he was crazy - and he'd thought it might help to come back, just for a little while, see how everything had changed. A few minutes of walking down the street, unfortunately, had disabused him of that notion.

Diagon Alley had not much changed. Diagon Alley was full of memories.

Quality Quidditch Supplies, which pulled his friends like a magnet. In a better world, he thought, James might have played in the League, if the world had not needed him to fight. Lily would have been an alchemist and Edgar would have been a novelist and Helen would have been a dancer and Frank would have been a Healer and Alice would probably still have been an Auror and Sirius - (don't think about Sirius)

_"You don't need a new broom, you've already got one."_

_"Yeah, but this one's better, and don't tell me you don't think Malfoy hasn't already got - "_

_"He does, Narcissa won't shut up about it, you know."_

(But Sirius was inextricably entangled with all his happy memories.)

Here the potions shop, where inevitably James would stop to stare longingly, even if they had plenty of ingredients in their kits and no need to go there, and whine for the next few hours about Lily's choices in friends.

_"Don't know WHAT she sees in him, the slimy git."_

_"Better at Potions than you?"_

_"Ugh!"_

The Leaky Cauldron, full of laughter; full of people they knew, friends who were loud and bright and cheerful before they grew up too fast and had to fight a war. Everyone had grown up too fast, really, and now all he had left of the laughter was painful memories.

_"What about the laws about underage magic, you could get EXPELLED - "_

_"Oh relax, Moony, we didn't use magic..."_

_"No?"_

_"'Course not, we tricked Tom into it!"_

The inevitable mess made at Flourish & Blotts hovered against his view of the neatly stacked books, undisturbed by the antics of long-dead Marauders.

_"How, exactly, did you turn half the shelves invisible?"_

_"Beats me, let's go before we get in trouble - "_

_"I can't take you two ANYWHERE..."_

The memories turned darker as he neared Knockturn Alley, because that was where the danger came from, that was where people stopped going out at night when the war had been at its height. That was where Sirius would vanish for hours at a time, and come back without his brother, looking like he wanted to kill something. That was where James had pulled them, the first time they went out Death Eater hunting, the only time they'd brought Peter.

_"How do I - "_

_"Shut up, Peter!"_

_"But I don't - "_

_"Shut up!"_

Remus hadn't wondered, at the time, why Sirius had been so harsh to Peter for getting them spotted, throwing them unprepared into a firefight. James had been making tea with shaking hands while Sirius yelled and Remus tried to patch everyone together. Peter had never tried again to follow them into their war; James and Sirius had killed people for the first time that night, and Peter had nearly been one of them when he didn't duck fast enough. Remus had never wondered why Sirius had gotten  _used_ to lethal combat so much more easily than James, never wondered what it meant that Sirius could wrap a faceless Death Eater around a fence spike and laugh. He'd been too busy wondering where James' laughter had gone. And then -

" _Sirius killed Peter this morning."_

_"WHAT?"_

_"They've taken him to Azkaban - "_

_"But that's absurd, why - how - "_

He'd thought he knew him. He'd thought he knew all of them. They'd seemed so predictable, as children, as teenagers.

_"Come on, let's go watch James trip over himself trying to impress Lily."_

He'd thought - but no.

Could any of these memories tell him what had gone wrong?

The thing was, he'd been so pleased to finally have friends.

_"You're a werewolf, aren't ya, Lupin?"_

_"What? I - "_

_"Oh come off it, Potter, you're scaring him. Don't worry, Lupin, we don't care."_

Had that blinded him? Was there something, was there anything, he should have seen?

_"Remus, help, I still can't do a Cheering Charm - "_

_"Calm down, calm down. Let's practice on these two, shall we? Maybe then they'll stop whingeing about losing at Quidditch ..."_

He'd always tried to be kind, especially to Peter, because he knew what it was not to have friends. Neither of them had suspected James and Sirius to be anything but genuinely friends. Peter hadn't known, either, and that didn't make Remus feel better about his own obliviousness, not at all. He would have expected blind reckless foolishness of even Lily before he expected it of Peter, and then he'd been wrong again -

_"Peter tried to hunt down Sirius, he wanted revenge for James ... "_

_"The idiot ought to have known he'd lose that fight!"_

_"A fool, yes, but a brave fool."_

Poor Peter.

Remus thought he probably ought to go home, and stop walking through this pit of memories. Peter was dead. James and Lily were dead and their son with them, never to grow into adulthood. The Boneses, the Prewetts, the Longbottoms, the McKinnons, all gone. And Sirius ... the Sirius he had known was either dead or had never existed at all.

Here was Madam Malkin's, where Sirius had spent a half hour tormenting Regulus about his green scarf.

_"Too scared you'll be like me, eh, Reggie? Too scared not to do what Mummy and Daddy say? You'll be in Slytherin, don't worry, and good riddance - "_

And yet they'd gone the same path. They'd nearly killed each other at the last Quidditch game before graduation, they'd hated each other, anyone with eyes could see they would had died before taking orders from the same leader ... and then. How much of that hatred had been a lie, Remus wondered? Had the Black brothers been lying? (When Regulus died, James and Lily had had to actually sedate Sirius to keep him from having a dramatic and probably violent breakdown, and not everyone had been surprised.) Had Sirius been a spy all along? Had all their time at Hogwarts been a lie? (If it was, Remus maybe didn't want to know.)

Remus was pretty sure he ought to leave. This couldn't be healthy.

But the memories flowed, all the same.

_"It's, well, it's not really - we're not supposed to tell anyone - "_

_"I'm in the Order just as much as you are!"_

_"Well - "_

That was the day he knew they'd stopped trusting him, the day they'd thrown his own words ("necessary conservation of information") back at him, the words he'd used when he'd done that spy mission with the werewolves in Serbia and hadn't been able to tell them about it. They  _hadn't_ been under orders, they had only decided themselves that it was best he not know, in case he was a spy - and it had hurt more than any Cruciatus. He'd practically blinked and they'd all disappeared.

He really ought to stop  _thinking_  about this, but -

_"Hey Moony, sorry Pomfrey wouldn't let you out, we brought you some chocolate, you feeling okay?"_

He kept walking.

* * *

 

"This cannot  _possibly_  be a good idea," said Severus flatly.

Minerva nodded firmly. "I must say I agree, Albus." For once the Gryffindor and Slytherin Heads were in complete accord. It felt a little strange to Minerva, really. It wasn't that she didn't get along with Severus, of course, but his students were a constant thorn in her side. Albus had (probably accurately) observed that even Salazar himself would not have been able to fix the Dark shadow hovering around the Slytherins of the last few generations, not without summarily executing half of them, but it was still a source of conflict, and she couldn't remember the last time she and Severus had been entirely in agreement about something.

In any case. Bad ideas, see also: The Philosopher's Stone, and Albus' mad plan to bring it from Gringotts to Hogwarts via Rubeus Hagrid.

"Hagrid is perfectly trustworthy," insisted Albus cheerfully, "and Hogwarts is the safest place in the world, they say. Everything will be fine!"

Severus stared at him in clear astonishment. Minerva felt much the same way. "Actually," the potions master objected, speaking slowly, as if to a child, "I was talking about the part of the plan where we  _tell everyone on staff_."

"Ah, but Severus, it is a trap!"

Silence.

Both professors stared at him blankly.

Albus twinkled merrily, waiting for someone to ask. Minerva wasn't sure she was up to it, really.

"What?" asked Severus finally, cautiously.

Apparently, Albus had decided that everything would be twice as fun if he pretended to be crazy. Or, Minerva supposed, he might actually be going crazy. (She wasn't quite sure which was worse.) The headmaster said, as if this were an explanation, "Surely you have heard the proverb that says, 'the best way to keep a secret among three people' - "

" - is to kill two of them, yes," agreed Severus, ignoring Minerva's slightly scandalized gasp. Surely he wasn't implying that he was going to kill Hagrid? "What is your point?"

"Why, of course," smiled Albus, "by contrast, the easiest way to be sure a secret gets out is to tell as many people about it as possible!"

Minerva caught up. More or less. "You mean you  _want_  people to know that you are hiding the Philosopher's Stone inside Hogwarts?"  _Why_? She wanted to ask. What purpose could that  _possibly_  serve? Albus wasn't usually the sort for pointless braggadocio, at least in her experience.

"Of course not," replied Albus, still unreasonably cheerful, "that would be silly. Everyone would want it."

There was another awkward silence.

"Ah, I see," said Severus, and Minerva's gaze snapped to him, utterly astonished.

"You see? What do you see? This makes no sense!" she protested.

"That is because you are not a Slytherin, Minerva," Severus said in a tone that, for him, might even have been an attempt at being gentle. "The Philosopher's Stone will not actually be hidden behind the elaborate traps we will set up. It will be a monitoring device of some kind, designed to tell us who steals it." He glanced at the headmaster for confirmation.

"Precisely!" said Albus, beaming.

Minerva was boggled. No, indeed, she was not a Slytherin. She had been offered Ravenclaw as a child, yes, but she was a  _Gryffindor._ She could handle military strategy - and she'd found she was quite good at chess, when she tried after the war was over - but plotting of this type was foreign to her. That was for people like Severus Snape and Augusta Longbottom, for the clever Slytherins to whom complex dramas were bread and butter and wine. Still, it unnerved her to be quite so lost. Augusta, at least, usually  _explained_ her plots (though Minerva was still not completely sure she understood the series of bribes and blackmail that had been involved in the, ahem,  _suicide_ of Lucretia Black-Prewett). This one didn't seem to have gotten any less confusing with explanation. "What? Why?"

Severus, thankfully, took pity on her confusion and kept explaining. "If there is one thing that we can count on Death Eaters to want desperately, it is the Philosopher's Stone," he said. "After all, they're all fundamentally self-absorbed, and if ever there was an easier ticket to a selfishly comfortable life than endless gold and immortality, I cannot name it." Minerva noted with interest and approval that Severus was now referring to the Death Eaters as  _they_ , rather than  _we_. He continued, "We can safely expect that any who find out will attempt to steal it." Reasonable enough. She nodded. "Therefore, a theft gives us useful information about who is and is not trustworthy. For example, if Lucius Malfoy were the thief, one might safely assume that I was the one who had told him."

Minerva blinked, and assimilated all that, and nodded again. "I - alright, I suppose that makes sense, although I still don't see why it's quite necessary. Am I to assume that Nicholas Flamel is still in possession of the Stone itself?"

"You may assume that," smiled Albus, and the way he was twinkling at her told Minerva that even if she assumed that, it wouldn't be true.

She sighed. It was probably best just to go back to planning her lessons, and leave all this Slytherining to the Slytherins. 

* * *

 


	5. The Hogwarts Express

_"I'm Hermione Granger, by the way, who are you?"_

* * *

"So which house d'you think you'll be?" Hermione asked, while Ron and Neville were still recovering from her extended lecture about the history of the school. Neville refrained from commenting on it aloud, but he privately thought she reminded him a bit of his grandmother. "I've looked up about all the Houses of course," she was saying excitedly, "and I think I'd like to be in Gryffindor, it sounds by far the best." Had his Gran been a Gryffindor? He sort of thought she'd been a Slytherin, actually, though she hadn't actuallysaid anything on the subject that he could recall. She  _was_ always wearing green, and getting people to do things for her without apparently putting forth any effort ...

"Of course it is!" said Ron, clearly seizing upon something he understood. He'd spent most of Hermione's lecture sort of staring at her in astonishment. The redheaded boy had been sitting alone when, having given up their quest to find Trevor, Neville and Hermione had asked to sit in his compartment, and Neville suspected that Ron was not finding his first introduction to Hogwarts to be at all what he'd expected. Ron said proudly, "My family's all been in Gryffindor, they're the good guys, you know, the Potters were Gryffindors."

Well, that was a fair point, Neville thought. The people who'd defeated You-Know-Who, after all, were the best sort of role model. Except for the part where they'd died, obviously.

"Really?" said Hermione with evident interest. "I didn't know that, where'd you read that?"

Ron blinked. "Er - I don't think I read it, I think maybe one of my brothers told me." The redheaded boy looked somewhat nervous. Neville couldn't blame him; he certainly hadn't been expecting to be quizzed on which of his textbooks he'd read (none of them) before term even started, either. (Were all Muggleborns like this, or just Hermione Granger? If they were all like this, he had  _no idea_ why purebloods acted so superior all the time.)

"Oh," said Hermione. She looked slightly disappointed. Neville wasn't really sure why. "Well... do you think you'll be in Gryffindor, then?" Ron cringed at the reminder that he'd yet to be Sorted.

"Probably," said Neville, who didn't think Ron had any cause to worry, and feeling a bit like he ought to be participating in the conversation in some way. "Houses usually run in families, so if all the Weasleys have been Gryffindors he'll probably be one too." Neville didn't mention that he had no such reassuring precedent to lean on; his father had been a Gryffindor, his mother a Ravenclaw, Gran was (probably) a Slytherin, and he was pretty sure his late grandfather had been a Hufflepuff. He didn't think he was really worthy of  _any_ of the Houses, and without a rule like  _Weasleys are all Gryffindors_ , what if the Hat just decided he wasn't good enough and sent him home -

"Oh!" said Hermione suddenly, "I wonder how close we are to school!"

"Um - " began Neville, but already Hermione had jumped from her seat. Before he could ask what she was doing, she ran out of the compartment, leaving Ron and Neville alone to try to make awkward conversation. Fortunately, she'd also left them with a subject. For this Neville was profoundly grateful. Otherwise they'd have been forced to talk about Quidditch or something, and Neville was fairly certain that most Muggleborns knew more about the sport than he did.

Ron turned to Neville. "You really think I'll be a Gryffindor?" he asked hopefully.

"Oh yeah, definitely," said Neville, wishing he could be half as confident about his own Sorting. At least thinking about Ron's was less frightening than thinking about his.

But: "What about you then?" asked Ron, of course, and Neville winced.

"Well, I mean, I hope I'm in Gryffindor, but ..." He trailed off. His voice was trembling, and he really wished it wouldn't do that. It always made Gran give him stern glares.

There was an awkward silence, which was fortunately broken several minutes later by the reappearance of Hermione. Neville noticed that Ron seemed much more annoyed about this than he himself felt. "I've just been up front to ask the conductor," the bossy girl said briskly, "and you two really ought to get changed, we're nearly there."

"Well, can you leave then?" said Ron. She sniffed at him and left in a huff.


	6. The Sorting Hat

"Abbott, Hannah!"

Hannah Abbott's first thought was  _why do I always have to go first,_ and then after that,  _I don't want to be first, Hat, I just want to be me._

 _Admirable sentiment,_ said the Hat, and Hannah would have squeaked if she weren't being prevented by the Hat's magic from speaking aloud. She hadn't really,  _actually_ been expecting it to talk to her.  _So then, child, what does it mean to be you?_

 _Um,_ thought Hannah. She had never been asked anything so momentous before in her entire life, and she had no idea how to form proper words for it, to describe how she loved her mum and wanted to make friends and was sort of terrified that she'd accidentally make friends her mum wouldn't like and how she wanted to be a Healer because she wanted to help people but she didn't know if that was a proper answer or not, and what if it sent her to Slytherin because she didn't have a sensible answer, she'd try to be friends with them of course but her mother was Muggleborn and it would be so  _awkward_ -

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

* * *

"Bones, Susan!"

Susan approached the Hat rather more sedately than the first girl had, and sat down calmly, and donned the Hat, and thought,  _Excuse me, but do you know why people are so against cross-House friendships?_ The thing was, her parents had been from two different Houses (the House of Bones had been Hufflepuff for ages, but her mum had been a Ravenclaw), and she was just so very curious how it'd happened. The House separations were getting worse, her Auntie had said, and she really wanted to know if she could  _fix_ that ...

There was a pause.

 _Did you know,_ the Hat said,  _your father asked me the exact same question?_

_Huh? What d'you -_

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

* * *

"Boot, Terry!"

Terry really  _wanted_ to look dignified and calm, but he was too consumed with curiosity; and so his attempt at a casual walk turned helplessly into a scramble for the battered artifact. It was hundreds and hundreds of years old and so of course he  _tried_ to be careful with it, but he just  _really really wanted to ask it -_

_How old are you, exactly? Who made you? How do you work? Don't you get bored? Were you a real person? How do you make it so that there's such an even number of students in each house? How do you stop people from talking out loud? Wh -_

_Stop,_ said the voice of the Hat, and Terry subsided in embarrassment.

_Sorry._

_I am exactly one thousand and sixty-eight years old, I was made by Godric's uncle Jory the Madder Hatter, I work by magic that Rowena never bothered to explain to me, and no, of course I don't get bored, I am a hat. The remaining questions you can find the answers to in the private library in your House, which is of course -_

"RAVENCLAW!"

* * *

"Brocklehurst, Mandy!"

Mandy had questions, too, but she managed much better at walking calmly and being gentle with the ancient Hat, which she settled very carefully on her head before she began asking them.  _Hello, Hat, I was wondering if there's any real connection between House and blood status? Like I know there's never Muggleborns in Slytherin but is that because the Slytherins don't want Muggleborns or because Muggleborns are actually less likely to be Slytherin-y? Or -_

 _I do not consider blood status as relevant to my decisions,_ said the Hat firmly,  _though many of the students do. If you would like to know more on the subject, try consulting the library under the subject 'Historical Muggle Prejudice.' Do you think it is more important to have good friends or to have intelligent friends?_

Mandy did not respond to this question immediately, because she had been so thoroughly thrown off-balance by its abruptness. What an odd thing to ask; wasn't the important thing to have friends at all? But, well, if she had to choose -  _I think that's an unfair distinction,_ she said, or tried to say, as it didn't actually leave her mouth.  _Being intelligent is being good, isn't it?_ _  
_

 _Some might disagree with you,_ the Hat replied rather wryly,  _such as, perhaps, around three-quarters of the school;_   _but those who think similarly will likely join you in -_

"RAVENCLAW!"

* * *

"Brown, Lavender!"

Lavender was frightened. She'd only found out a few months ago that her father (who had died before she was born) had been a wizard, that the strange things that sometimes happened in their house weren't just "oh, probably ghosts" but Lavender doing accidental magic. Her mother was what was apparently called a  _Muggle_ , and so had raised her normally ... Oh, it was going to be so hard not to think of magic as  _weird._ Even though it  _was_  weird, it was impossibly weird, she was literally about to talk to a Hat and have it decide the course of her life -

 _Hello,_ it said, and Lavender took a deep breath.

 _I am not afraid,_ she told herself firmly. She'd heard Hermione Granger talking about how Headmaster Dumbledore had been in Gryffindor, and she wanted to be like that.  _I can do this._

 _Of course you are afraid,_ the Hat said, and Lavender winced. How was she supposed to convince it she was good enough to be Gryffindor if it could see her emotions better than she could? She was about to protest when it said,  _but that's quite alright._  She paused in confusion, and the Hat explained,  _Godric always said, "To be brave is not to be unafraid; it is to face the world when you are afraid."_

 _Er,_ thought Lavender,  _that didn't quite make sense._

_It will, in time. You are, after all, a -_

"GRYFFINDOR!"

* * *

"Bulstrode, Millicent!"

 _I'm going to break that Corner boy's nose if he doesn't stop humming,_ Millicent was thinking as she stalked up to the stool in the wake of beaming Lavender Brown who had just run off to the Gryffindor table.

As the Hat settled on her head, it said in her mind,  _Why? He carries a perfectly good tune._

 _It's annoying. Annoying things should be hurt until they stop being annoying,_ she thought with a sort of mental shrug.

_Hmm. I seem to recall that exact phrase being spoken by a certain green-eyed old wizard called Salazar -_

"SLYTHERIN!"

* * *

"Corner, Michael!"

Michael was humming faintly to himself, drawing annoyed looks from several nervous-looking students in his vicinity and a faint smile from a blonde, rather Nordic girl, who he thought he might recall someone earlier calling 'Lisa.' She had started to hum along - apparently she knew the song - by the time Michael's name was called, and he skipped brightly up to the stool. Ignoring the annoyance of other students in your age-group was an art you had to learn when you kept being smarter than they were.

_Hullo, Hat._

_Ah, you are an interesting one!_ the Hat exclaimed.  _Full of excitement, not sure if you want to read the entire library or perhaps set fire to it -_

 _What!_ exclaimed Michael, scandalized.  _Why on earth would I -_

 _Ah, but you did think of it,_ laughed the Hat.  _You wondered, you did, when you were told there was a thousand-year-old library, whether your most entertaining route to fame might be to burn the library and see what everyone says! You are not the first to wonder, nor are you the first with the courage to try such a stunt, and I doubt you shall be the first to succeed._  The Hat seemed to be teasing him, as if he were a child who'd suggested it was a good idea to put the fire out with butterbeer, to save water.  _But you should be glad; you would regret, I think, the lost knowledge._ _  
_

 _Excuse me,_ said Michael, nettled,  _I would read the whole thing first, you know!_

_Ah, no more denials, no more "I would never do that"? You are unusually self-aware._

Michael rolled his eyes, under the darkness of the too-large Hat.  _I'm not stupid enough to do everything my subconscious suggests would be fun. I'm not gonna lie and say it wouldn't be fun, but it'd also be stupid and I'd regret it! I think about things before I do them, I'm not a Gryffindor.  
_

_Oh, aren't you? Well, I suppose you must then belong to -_

"RAVENCLAW!"

* * *

"Cornfoot, Stephen!"

Stephen wasn't paying attention when the Deputy Headmistress called his name; he was busy wondering about the Hogwarts Express. He lived in Edinburgh, and his father had complained at length during the trip down to London that it would be monumentally easier to simply Floo or even fly to Hogsmeade. And yet everyone was required to get on the train in London and then spend eight hours coming  _back_ to Scotland.

(Stephen had spent most of the train ride commiserating with Ernie and Zacharias, although Morag had thankfully been elsewhere. Not that Morag wasn't good company, but she was somewhat more vocal than Ernie about her fondness for the Pride of Portree and they'd unexpectedly flattened Stephen's team the Magpies the previous weekend.)

"Cornfoot, Stephen!" repeated Professor McGonagall sharply, and Stephen startled visibly and shuffled apologetically up to the stool. A number of the other first-years were snickering at him - Zacharias was among them, although Ernie (eternally serious) wasn't.

_Um, hello, Hat._

_Hmm ... interesting. Usually a student too distracted by curiosities is one I must throw at once in Ravenclaw._

_Usually?_ Stephen was nervous to hear that. Was he not smart enough for Ravenclaw? Ernie would never mock him for that, but it would still bother him ...

 _That is a misconception,_ the Hat told him sternly.  _To be Ravenclaw does not indicate intelligence; it indicates that the driving force is curiosity. Still, both you have in abundance; but you also eat and sleep and breathe familial loyalty, friendship, honor. You are more prone to doing the same thing over and over until you're sure you know it, than to run off to absorb new things as quickly as possible._

After a moment, Stephen thought cautiously,  _Er - thank you, I think? Should I be deciding which I think is more important, or -_

 _I am only explaining this to you because you are wondering, not because it is a question yet unanswered,_ said the Hat. Stephen had the impression it was rolling its eyes at him.  _You are not a Ravenclaw, Stephen Cornfoot. You belong in -_

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

* * *

"Crabbe, Vincent!"

He already knew the answer, so he was a little surprised when the Hat talked to him instead of just announcing it. Indeed, he might have startled rather visibly, had there not been magic in place to prevent people from doing that.

 _It is very interesting,_ said the Hat, in tones that reminded Vincent forcibly of the quiet lectures of Theodore's father who had tutored them all when they were young. Before he could ask what was interesting, the Hat continued.  _It is very interesting when students come to me already convinced of where they belong, and yet in so doing show themselves fitting for other homes._

 _What?_ thought Vincent, puzzled.  _I'm a Slytherin, aren't I? Why wouldn't I be?_

 _You do not have ambition,_ the Hat told him calmly, not judging, simply as if it were a statement of fact.  _You have been taught from a young age to grasp opportunity, to try to make yourself better at the expense of others - but why?_

Vincent had never had anyone ask him that. Not even old Mr. Nott, who was very fond of  _why_ questions ( _why do we use wands, not staves? why did the goblins rebel in 1612? why do we use livers in most potions instead of spleens?)_ and thus had made himself a young Vincent's least favorite person, since he never knew any of the answers.  _Um,_ he thought. That being better than other people was better than not being better than other people seemed sort of obvious.  _  
_

 _I shall explain,_ said the Hat patiently.  _You, personally, do not have in you the drive to become great; only the desire to be like your friends. You conceive of yourself as a Slytherin, because everyone else you know is a Slytherin. This sort of group loyalty, dear child, is a defining trait not of Slytherins, but of Hufflepuffs ..._

 _No!_ Vincent would have cried aloud, had he been able, in sheer panic. His father would disown him, Gregory would never speak to him again, he would be cut off from any advantage he might have gained by association with the Malfoys, it would  _ruin his life_ to be in Hufflepuff -

 _Ah, well,_ said the Hat. It sounded almost sad.  _Slytherin is a noble house, but you will not be happy there, Vincent Crabbe. In Hufflepuff you could be happy, you know._

 _No!_ he repeated as firmly as possible.

_You will not be convinced otherwise, will you? And choices are important, Vincent. I hope it shall not haunt you, to think you might have gone somewhere else other than -_

"SLYTHERIN!"

* * *

"Davis, Tracey!"

Tracey skittered nervously up to the stool and donned the Hat, trying not to look at the Slytherin table.  _Not Slytherin,_ she thought as soon as she donned the Hat,  _I know I'm a Slytherin, I know, Daddy says so, but ... Please, not Slytherin._ She was scared of them, really, that was the reason. She was scared that if she went there they'd find out that her Mum was a Muggleborn, that she had  _Muggle cousins_ that she actually spoke to occasionally (they weren't half bad, really), and Draco Malfoy would probably have her  _crucified_...  _  
_

Once she had stopped panicking, the Hat addressed her calmly. _Ah, dear child, but you are a Slytherin. Clever and cunning and not all that attached to the rules - oh, come now, don't tell me you don't think it'd be a challenge worth your time._

Tracy was not stupid enough to try to lie to the Sorting Hat. It  _would_ be a challenge, keeping her blood status quiet in the den of snakes, but it would be a  _fun_ challenge, and sure she could run to Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff or (ugh) Gryffindor, but why? She might make friends, but so  _easily_ , and where was the fun in that?

 _Alright,_ she said,  _alright, you got me._

_Good girl. If you'd argued I might have had to send you to Gryffindor. Off you go, then,_

"SLYTHERIN!"

* * *

"Entwhistle, Kevin!"

Kevin was utterly awed by this entire thing, a magic platform and a train ride into Scotland and a giant castle and  _gosh, how were those candles floating without anything holding them up?_ , but he was at least paying enough attention to hear his name called, and without too much stumbling made it to the stool to put on the (singing!) Hat. He didn't really address it or anything because he wasn't sure how to talk to it and wasn't sure whether it talked at all, and in any case he was busy wondering how the school found magic kids that didn't have magic parents, and how Exploding Snap cards worked (he'd been taught to play on the train, by a blonde girl whose name he did not at all remember), and what kind of genes made up magic, and whether all of the teachers were properly human, and whether dragons were real, and if it was common for hats to sing, and -

(He never did find out what it sounded like to have a telepathic singing Hat talk to you, because it spent about three seconds on his head before making a decision and shouting it for everyone to hear.)

"RAVENCLAW!"

* * *

"Finch-Fletchley, Justin!"

 _Good evening,_ thought Justin politely as he put on the Hat. He wasn't totally sure if it would get that, but the girl he'd met on the train, Susan, had said Sorting involved a conversation of some sort (though she hadn't, admittedly, been at all sure what you were meant to be talking  _to_ , and that chattery Scottish girl, Morag, hadn't known either). So he thought it was worth a shot.

 _Good evening to you, too,_ said a voice in his head, and he was delighted. The Hat was indeed apparently sentient, and so he trusted it to make a good choice. None of the students yet Sorted had seemed unhappy with theirs, after all.  _Good manners and easy smiles - ah, you could be happy anywhere, I think._ Justin had the distinct feeling that the Hat was smiling at him.  _But neither heroism nor curiosity nor ambition is truly your driving force; I think you will be happiest in -_

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

* * *

"Finnegan, Seamus!"

Seamus was entirely unsure what to expect as he ambled over to the stool and donned the Hat. By now it was becoming obvious that it didn't take the same amount of time to Sort everyone, but he wasn't sure whether taking a long time was supposed to be a  _good_ thing or not.

He became sure of the answer, however, when the Hat seemed to make an instantaneous decision, and the knowledge was accompanied by a feeling of instantaneous relief.  _Full of fire, you are, Godric would like you -_

"GRYFFINDOR!"

* * *

"Goldstein, Anthony!"

Anthony was not all that confused, he thought. He was full of questions, but he'd organized them sensibly, and looked things up in the bookstore when he went there to buy textbooks, and he thought he basically understood what was going on. He was pretty sure he'd need only put on the Hat for a moment and it would tell him that his sensibly-organized brain belonged in Ravenclaw where all the intelligent people were.

Therefore he was extremely surprised when it said thoughtfully,  _Hmm, I think you could do well in Gryffindor or Hufflepuff, and I shan't bother to list all their qualities, as I know perfectly well that was the first thing you researched. Gryffindor for your inner nature, Hufflepuff for your social nature ..._

 _But I'm a Ravenclaw!_ protested Anthony in total confusion.

The Hat seemed almost to sigh.  _You could do well in Ravenclaw,_ it admitted.  _You would be welcomed there, as much as Ravenclaws can welcome anything. But in a warmer house, in red or yellow, you would find a comfort that respect alone will not bring you -_

 _I'm a Ravenclaw,_ repeated Anthony stubbornly.  _You're supposed to Sort based on how we are, not what you think we'd like, I'm a Ravenclaw, don't be ridiculous._

 _On the contrary,_ the Hat objected,  _I Sort based on the students' well-being. It is not with idleness that I tell you that warm happiness comes more easily to Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs than Slytherins and Ravenclaws - but if you would rather coldness and respect, little scholar, I can only respect your choice. Enjoy -_

"RAVENCLAW!"

* * *

"Goyle, Gregory!"

Draco had to give him a little shove, because Gregory wasn't quite paying attention when his name was called, he was looking at the ceiling, fascinated by the stars he could see through the clouds that apparently weren't real. But then he moved right quick (can't be disappointing the Malfoy, that's never a good idea, father says) and sat on the stool and put on the Hat, and hoped it wouldn't take it as long to send him to the right place as it had Vincent.

(It had taken almost an  _entire minute_ for Vincent to get Sorted, and if it took him any less, Gregory was going to hold it over his best friend for the rest of his natural life.)

He was quite disappointed.

The Hat somehow conveyed through telepathy or sound a mischievous smirk; and it said,  _You could be a Gryffindor, you know, you have the determination in you -_ and a minute and a half of the Hat's wheedling, spiked with the knowledge that it was stalling  _on purpose,_ ruined any hope Gregory had had of teasing Vincent about his Sorting.  _  
_

(He didn't really need that extra aggravation to hate the House of Godric Gryffindor and his stupid bloody thousand-year-old immature child of a Hat, even if it helped, so when the Hat eventually gave up, its verdict wasn't _really_ a surprise.)

"SLYTHERIN!"

* * *

"Granger, Hermione!"

 _I want to be a Gryffindor!_ was the first thing she thought, firmly, upon running to the stool in excitement and donning the thousand-year-old artifact which had belonged to the greatest of the Founders, Godric Gryffindor.  _Please, please, I want to be a Gryffindor, -_

 _Why?_  inquired the Hat, sounding more curious than a Hat that could read her thoughts really ought to have been.

But she forged ahead and explained herself anyway.  _Dumbledore's a Gryffindor, I want to be like him, I can be brave, I promise, please -_

 _But child, you are so very Ravenclaw,_ the Hat objected, sighing.  _You drink up knowledge like it is ambrosia, your most basic interaction with other people is to talk about things you've learned. You belong in Ravenclaw, with others of your own kind. Or if you really don't like the idea, you have a number of Hufflepuff traits as well - hard work nearly to a fault - you could belong there, as well, if you preferred._

Hermione was not the slightest bit happy with this judgment.  _I want to be a Gryffindor,_ she repeated stubbornly.  _Knowledge, books, studying, I want to do well, of course, everyone does - but there's no point in being smart if you can't be brave!_ She had to explain, she had to make it understand ... if you went to a House it would magnify those things about you that were most closely aligned to that House's philosophy. Just because she was more Ravenclaw  _now_ didn't mean that being in Gryffindor wouldn't  _make her braver_ , and she  _wanted_ that, more than anything else -

The Hat seemed to sigh.  _I did not mean to imply that you are not brave, child,_ it said.  _Indeed, I can hardly deny it when you have the classically Gryffindor audacity to argue with me._

Hermione beamed, under the Hat's dark brim.  _So send me to Gryffindor then! Please? I promise I'll do your House proud! Cross my heart!_

 _You will not be at home there,_ it warned.  _Gryffindors are not used to having children such as you among them; they will not know what to do with you. You will be lonely, until you learn to be one of them, and that may take you a long time, Ravenclaw girl ..._

 _I can do it,_ she said stubbornly,  _please, I can, I will -_

_On your head be it, little lioness._

"GRYFFINDOR!"

* * *

"Greengrass, Daphne!"

Daphne walked in measured steps, a sharp contrast to the excited scramble of the bushy-haired Gryffindor girl before her. She had spent her whole childhood learning how to be graceful, how to be a mask of calm, how to look untouchable.  _The War is over,_ her father had told her,  _but there are still some who resent us for our failure to participate. Be careful, dearest._

She was careful. She held her head high. She settled the Hat over her head and did not betray her anxiety. She was good at pretending to be like her father, but had she really succeeded at  _being_ like him? (There was very little Daphne wanted, except to do as much good for her House as her father had done, and to do that she figured she needed to be her father.)

 _Ah, yes,_ said the Hat, sounding amused,  _yes, little Greengrass, you are indeed your father in miniature, as you have tried to be._ And just as she had hoped, too, the Hat spent very little time before it sent her to her father's home.  _You are the very picture of a young -_

"SLYTHERIN!"

* * *

"Hopkins, Wayne!"

Wayne was quick to run to the Hat, to escape the irritated gaze of the dark-haired girl next to him, who had been glaring at him ever since she found out he was from Wales and didn't speak Welsh  _("How dare you!")_. Honestly, he had no idea why that annoyed her so much, it wasn't like he'd done it on  _purpose_. He'd had primary school lessons in English, after all, and she hadn't, and anyway, oughtn't they to be friends?

Everyone ought to be friends.

(He did not talk to the Hat. It just smiled at him.)

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

* * *

"Jones, Megan!"

 _Hello,_ said the Hat, and then,  _be nice to your classmate, it is unlike you to be so judgmental. If you can find it in your heart to be nice to nearly everyone else you've ever met, why not one with whom you have much in common?_

 _Why would I need to be near him, aren't I a Slytherin?_ (She did not at all want to admit that she was already feeling guilty. Wayne had  _run_ from her when his name was called, as if frightened, and she really  _didn't_ want to scare people the way her cousin Gwenog did ... )

The Hat sighed.  _I suppose you could be successful there,_ it admitted. Megan knew that was true; her mother had been telling her all her life she was probably a Slytherin. She was a skilled liar and a weaver of tales, she would have fun trying to trick her Slytherin classmates into doing what she wanted ... Then it added in an almost wheedling tone,  _but you would be happier in Hufflepuff, you know ..._

 _Oh._  Happiness was important, that was one of the things her dad said all the time, whenever her mother made comments about her Slytherinness. 'Don't let ambition get in the way of happiness.' Her dad was smart, and the Hat was probably pretty smart too, so she supposed she ought to take its advice. _Well - alright._

Belatedly, it occurred to Megan that the Hat was speaking to her in Welsh (how strange), not English, but she didn't have time to inquire, because it had already made its shouted judgment.

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

* * *

"Li, Su!"

She could see her cousin Cho waving at her from the Ravenclaw table as she stepped up to the stool and sat, and then let the Hat fall over her eyes. She had really missed Cho, whose mother was Su's father's sister and used to bring her over all the time so that they could do their homework together. Neither of their parents spoke especially good English, and they'd sent the girls to Muggle primary school expressly for the purpose of making sure they were absolutely fluent before they went to Hogwarts; but it had turned out to be a lot of fun. Cho was good at arithmetic and Su was better at spelling, and they'd bonded as children over helping each other, even though Cho was a year older.

She'd come back the previous summer full of enthusiasm for magical classes, especially for Professor Flitwick the Charms professor who was her Head of House, and Su had been just  _dying_ to learn all the fascinating things Cho had told her about and not been able to demonstrate ...

(Later, she would find friends in Hufflepuff as well, and wonder why she had not thought of going there; and she would suspect that the fact that she was dwelling on homework and Charms class and a relative dressed all in blue explained how quickly the Hat made its judgment.)

"RAVENCLAW!"

* * *

"Longbottom, Neville!"

Neville was  _not_  frightened of a hat.

He kept telling himself that, but somehow that didn't stop his legs wobbling or his palms sweating or his eyes getting all watery or his voice going squeaky when he spoke. So he didn't speak, and he blinked a lot, and he kept his hands in his pockets and held tight to Trevor and tried to pretend he wasn't terrified.

"Longbottom, Neville!"

He almost missed it, and then he realized that was his name, and he jumped and almost tripped as he ran over to the stool and then almost fell again trying to sit down and then he nearly dropped the hat, and by the time Neville had managed to sit and put the Sorting Hat over his head, his face was burning.

 _Hello there_ , said a voice, and he started.

Neville thought cautiously,  _Er, um, hi?_

The sound of laughter rang in his head.  _You seem particularly frightened of me. I am just a hat._

 _I'm - I'm not scared!_  Neville insisted.

_I can see inside your head, child, do not lie. Points for effort, however._

Neville fidgeted under the Hat's brim.  _Okay, alright, I'm scared, but you're NOT just a hat,_ he argued.  _I mean, whatever you tell me is going to decide basically my entire life and what if my Gran doesn't like it? What if -_

The hat was laughing at him again, and Neville quailed and shut up.  _Don't worry,_  it said, and Neville thought a bit mutinously that laughing at someone was an awful way of trying to cheer them up, but it continued.  _Some are difficult, some require choices or even arguments - but you?_

 _Me?_ he gulped.

 _You're easy_ , said the Hat with what Neville thought might have been properly interpreted as a smile.  _You are and will probably always be a true -_

"GRYFFINDOR!"

* * *

"MacDougal, Morag!"

Morag had to wait a moment, for a red-faced Neville Longbottom to run back to the high table, for he had run to the Gryffindor table still wearing the hat. She gave him a measured, distasteful look as he handed her the Sorting Hat, and then settled imperiously upon the stool as if it were her own personal throne, and donned the Hat like a crown.

 _Oh, gracious, you are a fascinating one. All full of contradictions,_ the Hat observed.  _You want a spotlight, you do not care to share, and yet it frightens you deeply that you might not make friends; you yearn for approval and yet do not deign to be concerned with others' opinions; you want to know everything but nothing should be acceptable but that you learn it yourself ... ah, my, you might go anywhere._

 _Do I get to pick, then?_ inquired Morag, wondering absently why the Hat didn't have an English accent. It sounded just like her father, stern and Scottish, bringing to mind large beards and reddish hair.

 _I am speaking in Godric's voice,_ the Hat explained, ignoring her stated question in favor of the one she was thinking about.  _But since I borrow the student's own intelligence to speak to them, I sound the way they are most comfortable with - indeed, for Megan Jones I believe I was actually speaking in Welsh. And yes, you do get to choose. You do not need someone to tell you what to be, you need to be forced to make a decision you have thus far put off ... how do you want to identify yourself, Morag MacDougal?_

She thought about that. The Hat was right, damnably so; she had been putting off forming a solid impression of herself. She liked to play chameleon, to be a different person for each situation, and that made it easy not to have to think about who she  _really_ was. But how did she act when all alone? She liked to catalogue things, she had endless notebooks full of carefully written lists ... she liked to argue with people ... she could learn to think of herself as a scholar easily enough, she thought. Did that count as a decision?

_I think I'd like to be a Ravenclaw._

_Yes, that counts as a decision. The first one you've ever made, really. You ought to be proud of yourself._

"RAVENCLAW!"

* * *

"MacMillan, Ernie!"

 _Good evening, Mr. Sorting Hat,_ said Ernie politely as he sat, trying to balance the Hat so that he could still see and failing utterly. No one ever managed that, it was simply too big for eleven-year-olds. Godric Gryffindor had been a rather large man. (Ernie tried anyway, and then shrugged and moved on when he failed.)

 _Ah, Ernest Ernie,_ said the Hat,  _brave and steadfast and ever so serious ... and you would like to be Ravenclaw? Why?_

Well, his mother had been a Ravenclaw, and he always felt faintly inadequate whenever she said something he didn't understand, which was most of the time.  _I want to be smarter._

He had absolutely no idea how the Hat was managing to make a disapproving expression at him, since it didn't have a face for him to see.  _It is a misconception that all intelligent students are Ravenclaw,_ it pointed out.  _You are not unintelligent, Ernie Macmillan, do not let your mother tell you otherwise; but you are not a Ravenclaw, and I am not sending you there no matter how much you ask._

Ernie accepted this with aplomb, but he did have to ask,  _Why not?_

 _Because you would not belong,_ said the Hat,  _and there is nothing in you that would allow you to adapt, there is no part of you that could make it pleasant. When students argue I will send them where they ask, if they have anything, anything that makes it a sensible choice, but you would be miserable in Ravenclaw. You do not like to argue, you do not like to ask questions for the sake of questions, you do not like to be alone with a book. You are a social creature, you are meant to have friends and to do things with your hands, you are a -_

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

* * *

"Malfoy, Draco!"

_Oh. Well, you're easy._

"SLYTHERIN!"

* * *

"Nott, Theodore!"

Theodore was expecting to be Sorted as quickly as Draco had been.

He was somewhat disappointed.

 _Ahh,_ said the Hat,  _what a fascinating conflict you have._

 _Conflict?_ he said, a bit affronted.  _I'm a Slytherin, my family's always been, what conflict could there be?_ (Or could the Hat see the way he was annoyed sometimes with his father, with the way he expected adulthood from Theo before he had even gone to Hogwarts? He tried, he tried so hard, and it was  _never good enough -_ )

 _You could do well in Ravenclaw,_ the Hat said.  _Books and quiet and giant windows, and classmates who are not watching your every move to see if you deserve the respect they give you - you could be happy in Ravenclaw, Theodore._

It was tempting. But his father would be disappointed, and that was important to him, maybe more important than silly abstracts like happiness. Would success not make him happy? ... He was less disappointed when he realized that he could tell his friend (was the Malfoy his friend?) that the Hat had been trying to send him to Ravenclaw  _"Because I'm smarter than you, Draco,"_ and that thought made the decision for him.

"SLYTHERIN!"

* * *

"Parkinson, Pansy!"

She settled the Hat primly on her head after Theo handed it to her. He had an almost predatory grin on his face, which she suspected she would need to make Daphne explain to her; the social circles of the Noble Houses had all of these complicated rules that she didn't get, but which she really needed to learn to understand, if she was going to marry into one. Which she was going to, of course, because they didn't have money but she and her mother had all kinds of fascinating blackmail to make them do whatever she wanted ...

 _Oh,_ she heard the Hat say,  _you're not complicated, are you ..._

"SLYTHERIN!"

* * *

"Patil, Padma!"

Padma desperately wished that they didn't have to do this in front of the entire school. As she walked up to the stool, she felt like everyone was  _staring_ at her, like they had nothing better to do than watch her fidget and hope not to embarrass herself horribly.  _Please get this over with quickly,_ she thought as she pulled the Hat onto her head, and wasn't totally sure if she was begging the Hat or Vishnu, but she supposed the Hat was likely to hear her either way.

Though she could not see anything but the inside of the Hat and it certainly hadn't made any actual noise, she felt as though she could hear it nodding. (Padma made a mental note to look up magical synaesthesia.)  _Ah, my dear, worry not, you are not difficult. You think in questions and would rather go to the library than appreciate the feast. You are the very picture of a -_

"RAVENCLAW!"

* * *

"Patil, Parvati!"

 _I am not my sister, I am not my sister, I am not my sister,_ Parvati was thinking as she sat cautiously down on the bench. She loved Padma, of course she did, but -  _I don't want to spend all my time reading, I'm not a Ravenclaw, don't you dare send me there just because Padma is!_

That the Hat did not immediately dismiss her was reassuring. That it laughed was less so.  _Did you just threaten me?_ it inquired.

 _I - um -_  Parvati was briefly thrown, and then she rallied.  _You're just a hat! I could set you on fire!_

 _Good luck, dear,_ said the Hat, snorting,  _but don't worry, you're not a Ravenclaw. Stupidly courageous little girls who think they can set priceless magical artifacts on fire invariably belong in -_

"GRYFFINDOR!"

* * *

"Perks, Sally-Anne!"

 _Oh, they're twins_ , thought Sally-Anne in interest as the second of the Patils handed her the Hat and skipped off to Gryffindor, beaming so widely that it ought to have split her head open.  _I wish I had a twin._

 _Well, I can give you the next best thing,_ said the Hat.

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

* * *

"Rivers, Jonathan!"

Jonathan had had a completely different reaction to the observation that two twins had just been Sorted (and into different Houses, no less). He was wondering, as he picked up the Sorting Hat, whether magical twins had any unusual properties, like being able to feel each others' pain and the like. He'd heard stories, of course, but he'd never actually met any, and so he wasn't sure if those stories were based in truth like Babbitty Rabbit (who was obviously an Animagus) or completely crazy like the Three Brothers (who had  _met Death,_  yeah, right).

He promptly asked the Hat this.

 _I am not a twin and so I wouldn't know,_  said the Hat. Then it suggested, with a rather wry tone to its imaginary voice,  _Perhaps you should ask Padma Patil._   _You will be having classes with her._

"RAVENCLAW!"

* * *

"Roper, Sophia!"

_I wish everyone hadn't laughed at that Longbottom kid, it's not like this isn't terrifying, I don't blame him at all. Do you know how to make people stop doing that, Hat?_

It laughed.  _I am only a Hat, and cannot force people to become different,_ the Sorting Hat said.  _I can only tell you what I know from reading countless minds, which is that people laugh at their peers because it does not occur to them that the same thing could happen to them. Not everyone has your empathy, dear child. But you will find those who do in -_

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

* * *

"Runcorn, Allison!"

_Daddy says I'm gonna be the best witch in my year, he'd better be right -_

"SLYTHERIN!"

* * *

"Smith, Zacharias!"

Zacharias was practically radiating confidence by the time he sat; and it wasn't a confidence misplaced.

_Ah, ah, a Smith, you have been taught as well as any of your family - no question what to do with you, you're a -_

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

* * *

"Thomas, Dean!"

Thomas was starting to feel extremely nervous by the time his turn came around. He'd already felt like he stuck out, what with being the tallest first-year in the group, and having the group disappear around him did not make him feel less like everyone must be staring at him. Most of these kids were totally used to all this, he supposed, but he was still stuck on "I'm a  _what?_ I can do _what?_ " to feel like he was properly equipped to handle any of this.

He also didn't feel like he belonged in any of those Houses the Hat had sung about. He didn't think he had daring and nerve, or patience, or wit or cunning, or any of those things, he was just Dean. What if it said he didn't belong here? His mum had been so  _excited,_ so  _proud_  ... what would she say if he was sent home in disgrace because he wasn't really a proper wizard?

By the time his name was called he'd worked himself into quite a state of nervousness, but the Hat spent only a very brief period of time on his head.  _Not all bravery looks the same,_ it said,  _but you will find yours in time, I think._ _  
_

"GRYFFINDOR!"

* * *

"Turpin, Lisa!"

The boy who'd been humming, Michael Corner, had been sitting at the Ravenclaw table for most of the Sorting now, and there were only two people left besides Lisa, but she'd kept on with the same song. It was a good idea, she thought; music was a useful distraction. No wonder the sailors at the port were always singing when they had nothing better to do.

As she put on the Hat, it occurred to her that this explained why the Sorting Hat sang a song every year.  _That's how you entertain yourself between Sortings, isn't it?_ she inquired curiously, pretty sure she was right but inclined to be sure.  _Making up the songs. What a great idea!_

 _Thank you,_ said the Hat, seeming to smile,  _though it wasn't my idea, I think Helga spelled it into me, she loved to sing. An astute deduction nevertheless, and it certainly supports the theory that you belong in -_

"RAVENCLAW!"

* * *

"Weasley, Ronald!"

 _I'm a Gryffindor, right?_ was his first thought, a worried thought.

The Hat laughed at him.

 _Yet another Weasley? Ah, dear boy, you go where you belong, not where your family decides._ Then at his rush of terrified horror, it chuckled again.  _Just making a point. There is bravery in you, boy, do not doubt it. But are you sure? You could do well in Slytherin, you know. They would not reject you; you are of purer wizarding blood than many that call Salazar's house home -_

 _No!_ gasped Ron.  _No no no, absolutely not, no way._

 _Why not?_ inquired the Hat innocently.  _What better way to escape the wide shadows of your brothers, than to go where those shadows do not fall? In Slytherin, you could be the greatest of your family ..._

He thought about it for a moment. Though he would never admit it to his brothers, he really, truly thought about it. People were always telling Percy he ought to be a Slytherin, but he  _wasn't ..._ in Gryffindor Ron would just be, as the Hat had said laughingly, just another Weasley. In Slytherin no one would expect him to be like his brothers. But -  _think of what Mum would say -_

Ron shook his head stubbornly under the Hat.  _No._

The Hat seemed to sigh.  _Ah, well,_ it said,  _if you're sure, then, off you go to -_ _  
_

"GRYFFINDOR!"

* * *

"Zabini, Blaise!"

Blaise had been counting. He'd guessed he'd be last; names beginning with Z weren't exactly common in the Isles. And he'd counted exactly ten Hufflepuffs, ten Ravenclaws, nine Slytherins, and only seven Gryffindors, including the Weasley who'd just been Sorted. For this to be a reasonably  _fair_ distribution, he would have to be a Gryffindor. Ha. Not bloody likely.

He explained his alternative suggestion to the Hat as he settled calmly with it on his head.  _More Gryffindor types died in the war than any other,_ he pointed out.  _If it hadn't been for that, there'd probably be plenty more of the idiots - say a Potter and a McKinnon and a Prewett, more than likely, I've done my homework - so obviously the only real hole is that tenth spot in Slytherin, eh?_ Had he been allowed to move, he would have spread his arms in artful helplessness.  _And who am I to argue with statistics?_

 _A Ravenclaw, perhaps?_ suggested the Hat, sounding amused.

_And consort with an entire house full of know-it-alls like that annoying Scottish swot Morag, and clueless Mudbloods besides? No, thank you._

The Hat seemed almost to smile mischievously. Y _ou are not_ _really a blood purist,_  it said, a statement of fact that he didn't bother to deny to a mind-reading Hat. It was right, he'd only said that out of acquired habit, an insult he wore like a shield.  _You pretend because it suits you to have Draco Malfoy and Theodore Nott consider you an acceptable associate. You want to wear green because they are already there, because your cousin Daphne is looking at you right now wondering why it is taking so long ..._

 _So why don't you just send me there, then?_ complained Blaise in frustration.  _I have plenty of good reasons -_

 _You have a great many bad reasons,_ corrected the Hat.  _We are talking about this because you are not a cut-and-dry case. You might be successful in Slytherin, yes, you would have wealthy companions and amusing enemies, you need not try very hard to earn social and material wealth ... but you would not be happy. Not you, whose closest friend is a cousin with whom you share little but blood and a mutual annoyance with your parents. You would be happier in Ravenclaw, you know, or better yet, Hufflepuff._

He thought about that, for a couple of moments. He considered accepting this suggestion.

And then he rejected it.  _I would be bored in Hufflepuff. That's not happiness._ _  
_

_If you say so, little viper._

"SLYTHERIN!"

* * *

And with that, the Sorting was concluded, and the Feast begun.


	7. Learning To Fly

"Perce, you coming?"

Percy looked up from his Potions book to see Oliver Wood grinning at him, broomstick in hand. The twins were already clattering down the portrait hole, having an obscene amount of energy as usual. Percy raised his eyebrows at them. What on Earth would possess him to go watch his little brothers swing bats around while Oliver yelled at people? He had work to do. He showed up for games (he couldn't not, every one of his brothers had been on the team thus far), wasn't that enough? "Um, why would I?" he asked in confusion, "I'm studying."

His roommate, however, was looking at him like he was crazy. This was not an especially unfamiliar occurrence, but usually it accompanied somewhat understandable concerns, like  _what do you mean, you don't care who wins the League?,_ or  _How have you not heard about the new Cleansweep?_ or whatever. Things that Quidditch fans usually cared about. Percy had not thus far found any evidence which suggested that Quidditch fans wanted an audience for their practices, and he had no idea why they were having this conversation. Thankfully, Oliver enlightened him after a moment of them exchanging baffled looks. "I asked you if you'd play Seeker and you said sure," the captain said, starting to sound slightly disappointed.

Percy sighed. Technically, this was true. Charlie had left school two years early, chasing dragons, and Oliver had been scrambling to find a competent replacement ever since. Last year, after his most recent conscript had somehow managed to knock himself out with his own broomstick, Oliver had suggested that Percy, who after all was related to Charlie, try. The other Weasleys were all good flyers; Bill had played Keeper, in his time at the school. But, well. "Oliver, when I said 'sure,' I was being  _sarcastic_ ," Percy explained patiently. "I have no  _actual_  desire to waste my time on your field when I have OWLs to study for."

"Oy!" yelled the twins from the portrait hole, looking dramatically scandalized by the suggestion that Quidditch was a waste of time. Fred said, "We don't want you anyway!", and George added, "Good riddance!" with an almost stylized pompous air. It was probably a mockery of Percy himself, who apparently was the only member of his family capable of a reasonable level of responsible seriousness, but frankly Percy was completely okay with mostly-affectionate mockery if it would get him out of Quidditch. So he just nodded agreeably.

"See?" he said reasonably, pointing his quill at Fred and George. "You've been outvoted." He went back to his work, assuming the argument was over. Nobody in their right mind would actually want him to play Quidditch, after all. The very idea was preposterous, and he was glad Fred and George agreed. It was nice to see his brothers demonstrating rudimentary sensibility for once.

Distracted again by his Arithmancy homework, which was trying to run away across the page, Percy was nearly halfway to the portrait hole before he realized he was being dragged.

He yelped and jumped out of the moving chair. Angelina and Alicia promptly grabbed him by the arms, and he stumbled in confusion, his motion arrested, and failed utterly to escape. "Wait, no, hang on - " he began, alarmed. Surely they weren't serious? That would be insane? Wait, Gryffindors  _were_ all insane, weren't they...

Angelina seized the book he was holding, folded up his work neatly to use it as a bookmark (well, at least that would keep the charts from uncharting while they were gone, Percy thought with a mental sigh), and tossed it to Ron. "Give this to your brother later," Angelina said brightly, completely ignoring Percy's whine of dismay at the cavalier throwing of books. "He'll want it back when we're done with him." Ron, nodding, set the book on the table next to the Exploding Snap cards, grinning. Like all little brothers, the little git was enjoying watching Percy's dramatic loss in this argument. So, evidently, were the twins, who were giggling from outside the portrait hole as they held it open.

Percy tried to object again, though he was starting to sense it wasn't going to do him any good. "This is ridiculous," he said, "I am terrible at Quidditch - "

"Come on, Perce!" said Oliver cheerfully, overriding his objections. He'd just returned from the dormitories, carrying Percy's broomstick, which Percy was fairly certain he had not actually touched since the summer after his second year. Percy tried to back away, and failed; instead Angelina and Alicia ducked under his arms and lifted him off his feet. Percy was firmly of the opinion that this could not possibly end well, but he apparently didn't have a say in the matter. The girls, snickering, carried him bodily from the room.

As the door shut, most of the common room heard Percy's fading yell:

" _Dammit, Oliver!_ "

* * *

 

"Now hold your hand over the broom, and say 'UP!'," Madam Hooch instructed.

Neville did exactly that, but it just rolled over on the ground unhelpfully. He looked around nervously and found with relief that many people were having the same problem. Malfoy, of course, had his broom in hand and looked terribly smug; Ron, too, didn't seem to have had any trouble. The actual task achieved, the two of them now seemed to be having some sort of contest revolving around who could be more insulting without actually saying any words. Neville was rather impressed; they were rapidly approaching Gran-levels of disdainfulness. Hermione, to his left, was glaring sternly at her broom, which hadn't moved. Odd; Hermione was usually good at everything.

(Neville continued to have no idea how anyone genuinely believed Muggleborns were inherently inferior; given the lack of Muggleborns in Slytherin, he was starting to suspect that most of the blood purists had actually just never met any.)

"Up?" Neville repeated hesitantly, and nothing happened at all. He looked at the redhead next to him, who was paying him exactly zero attention, and tugged on his sleeve. "Ron, why isn't this working?"

Ron interrupted his glaring match with Malfoy to turn and look at him, startled. "Huh? Oh, uh, you've gotta, I dunno, say it like you mean it?" he offered vaguely, looking puzzled.

"I mean it just fine!" Hermione interjected, arms crossed in frustration.

At this, Ron looked downright delighted. After several weeks of being relentlessly upstaged by the bushy-haired brightest-witch-of-their-age, actually winning at something was clearly the highlight of his current existence. "What, you can't do it? Wow, something I'm actually better at than you?" He grinned. "Never thought it'd happen, did you?"

"You've also got chess," said Dean helpfully, as Hermione flushed red with annoyance and turned away again.

"Shut up and help us," added Seamus.

Then, for the first time, Ron noticed he'd been the only Gryffindor to succeed yet. "Oh," he said in mild surprise, glancing around. He tried again to explain. "Er - well - I think brooms can tell if you're scared of them, right? You have to, I dunno, really want to fly. That's what Charlie said."

"Who's Charlie?" asked Dean curiously, while Hermione frowned at her broom and informed it sternly that she wanted very much to fly. This did not have any marked effect on the stubbornly grounded vehicle, and she gritted her teeth and visibly stopped herself from demanding more answers from Ron. Lavender and Parvati giggled at her.

Meanwhile, Seamus explained, "Charlie's his brother," having already acquired this information through social osmosis. "Lee Jordan said he was one of the greatest Seekers Gryffindor ever - "

"Yeah," interrupted Ron, who looked a bit like he didn't really want to hear more about how awesome his brother was. Neville, who frequently felt inadequate in the face of people telling stories about his parents, could rather sympathize. Ron said hastily, "Anyway, go on, try it."

Eventually, with Ron's vague and amused but reasonably helpful encouragement, all the Gryffindors had managed to summon brooms into their hands, even Hermione, who Neville suspected had been listening even though she was pretending to ignore Ron. Neville, although he'd tried to convince himself (and his broom) otherwise, was already feeling a creeping sense of doom.  _I'm going to fall, he was thinking,_ feeling sick to his stomach _, I'm going to fall and everyone's going to laugh -_

"Mount your brooms!" barked Madam Hooch, and he did, and he tried not to let on that his entire body was shaking.  _I'm going to fall, I'm going to fall, I'm going to hurt myself and everyone will laugh and tell me how useless I am and Gran will be horribly disappointed -_

He was hardly listening as the instructor corrected various people, but when she reached him he jumped almost guiltily when she spoke. "Both hands on the broom, Longbottom," she told him, "no, here, one above the other so you have proper leverage." It took her barely two minutes to fix him, but to Neville it felt like an eternity during which everyone was staring at him. At least Ron was the only Gryffindor who laughed. Eventually, finally, she moved on to the rest, and Neville tried very hard not to move so that he wouldn't be wrong again.

"Now, on the count of three, kick off from the ground and rise, slowly, to about twenty feet, and then come back down," Madam Hooch instructed loudly, and then repeated this twice more until she was sure everyone had heard. Neville thought his heart must be beating so loudly that everyone could hear it.

"One - "

_Merlin, I'm going to fall -_

"Two -

_I'm going to die -_

"Three!"

He kicked off and started rising, quickly, too quickly, out of the group of broomsticks, and he wanted to stop but the broom kept going. Neville gave a horrified squeak and clung to the broomstick, begging it to sink. It ignored his wishes.

"Come back, boy!" shouted Madam Hooch.

"I'm tryyiiiing," he gasped, his voice sounding terribly squeaky and tearful. And then there was a terrible lurching in his stomach and nothing was holding him up anymore, and then sharp pain as he hit the ground.

* * *

"Hey, look, it's Longbottom's stupid toy - "

Ron was arguing the merits of the Chudley Cannons to Seamus, who was a die-hard Kenmare Kestrals fan, while Parvati spoke sharply at Pansy Parkinson (with whom, Lavender explained quietly to Dean, she had been friends until they were Sorted into opposing Houses). All Gryffindor conversation paused when the sound of Draco Malfoy's drawl cut through the air. The smug blond Slytherin was tossing Neville's Remembrall up and down in his hand, looking delighted. "Oy!" said Ron angrily, "you give that back!"

"Hmmm," said Draco in mock thoughtfulness, "no, I don't think I will." Then, as an idea occurred to him, his whole face lit up with malice, and he picked up his broomstick. "Come and get it, Weasel!" he laughed mockingly as he shot into the air. The Gryffindors all looked at each other nervously; Malfoy might be a smug little snot, but he  _was_ a good flyer.

It took Ron about three seconds of fuming before he picked up his own broom and mounted it. "Ron,  _no_!" hissed Hermione, sounding absolutely scandalized. "Weren't you listening, you could get  _expelled_ \- "

"Oh, hush," said Seamus dismissively, waving a hand, "he won't really," as Ron leapt into the air snarling.

"But - " began Hermione, still alarmed, "but Professor Hooch said - "

Parvati gave Hermione a rather extraordinarily condescending look. "Honestly," she said, rolling her eyes, "for a know-it-all, you really don't know anything." Then she was distracted, as Lavender tugged excitedly on her sleeve and pointed up at the sky, and consequently she missed Hermione's hurt expression entirely. (Hermione did not try again to intervene.) Meanwhile, Parvati's jaw dropped as she followed her friend's line of sight.

"Blimey," said Dean, in a tone which suggested he wasn't totally sure whether he should be concerned or deeply impressed. Ron and Malfoy's argument seemed to have devolved quite quickly into an attempt to wrestle each other off of their brooms, and they were descending rather rapidly out of the sky. Ron had got Malfoy into a headlock and was trying to get at the hand holding the Remembrall, but was failing to prevent the Slytherin from elbowing him repeatedly in the ribcage. As they descended back into earshot, the sounds of yelping reached the students on the ground.

"Oh,  _honestly_ ," said Tracey disdainfully, frowning at the brawl. Daphne nudged her with an elbow, making a warning face that said  _don't look at the Malfoy like that_ ; failing to pretend Draco Malfoy was perfect could get you in a lot of trouble, in Slytherin.

But perfect he was not; shortly the two boys were rolling around on the ground punching each other, and everyone else was exchanging nervous glances and trying to decide whether to intervene. The Slytherins seemed to think Malfoy might hex them if they interfered, and the Gryffindors had noticed that they were outnumbered nine to six even if they counted Hermione, who was unlikely to participate in a fight. Seamus and Dean had just barely decided they were going to try to help Ron when a voice cut through everyone's deliberations like a knife.

" _Mr. Weasley! Mr. Malfoy! Stop that at once!_ "

It was McGonagall.

The two brawling first-years separated themselves in a sheepish hurry. Both were covered in rapidly blooming bruises and dirt, Malfoy's nose was bloody, and Ron had blood tricking slowly down his cheek from a cut across his forehead. Malfoy said, "Weasley started i - " and Ron interrupted him angrily to object "No I di - ", and then they were both abruptly silenced by a glare from the formidable Transfiguration professor.

"Silence, the both of you," she said darkly, "and come with me."

Meekly, the two boys followed, shooting each other furious glares; but Ron had gone only about two steps before he paused, and turned, and threw the Remembrall towards the group of Gryffindors, causing a flurry of shocked sounds from the Slytherins who hadn't realized he'd got it away from Malfoy. Then Ron resumed following McGonagall, grinning victoriously. In a flurry of flailing and yelping, Seamus and Dean managed between them to get hold of the Remembrall before it hit the ground, and resolved not to mention to Ron or Neville that they'd nearly dropped it.

(Later, they heard that Ron and Malfoy had gotten a month's detention and each lost twenty points, but as Ron had broken Draco Malfoy's nose and returned Neville's Remembrall unbroken, he called it a success, and remained in a rather good mood for weeks.)

* * *

"Oliver, this is a  _terrible idea_ ," Percy repeated for the billionth time as the twins finished forcing him into Gryffindor robes. Despite several weeks of practices (during which he had, as far as he could tell, failed miserably), they had for some reason not given up on the idea that he ought to play Seeker. He really  _wasn't_ very good at this. Certainly nothing compared to Charlie had been. "Why  _me_?" he asked in despair.

"You're slightly better than our other options," replied Fred cheerfully, because Oliver, the target of this question, was studiously ignoring him. George added, somewhat seriously, "C'mon, Perce, at least do us a favor and try?"

Percy sighed and picked up his broom. Fred did have a point, to his annoyance. Oliver had, reluctantly, held tryouts a few weeks ago (although Percy had refused to participate), and apparently they'd  _actually_  failed to find an adequate replacement. Considering the low standard of "capable of flying a broomstick without crashing into anything", Percy had been absolutely, completely shocked. So shocked, in fact, that he'd agreed to do it, a decision that he was currently very much regretting.  _Surely_ there was a better option. Like, they could get Katie to do it, maybe, she was a better flier than he was, and littler, that was supposed to be a good thing for Seekers, wasn't it?...

"Good man," said George brightly, clearly unaware that this was all going to go horribly wrong. "Let's do this."

Lee Jordan, as usual, had got hold of the microphone. He'd been doing this since the first game of his first year, and Percy genuinely had no idea how that had happened. "Alright everybody, it's our first game of the year, Gryffindor versus Slytherin!" he yelled, clearly unaware that the point of microphones is to prevent you from having to yell. "We've all been wondering who Oliver Wood would get for a Seeker this year, and today he's fielding Gryffindor prefect Percy Weasley! After a few years of trying to replace Charlie Weasley, it looks like he's banking on genetics!"

Right, because that was totally a sensible way to pick Quidditch players, thought Percy, squashing the little voice in his head that said  _but the rest of your family is good at this game, you know_. "This is a bad idea," sighed Percy aloud, again, as they mounted their brooms. He glanced into the stands longingly, thinking that watching a Quidditch game sounded  _dramatically_  more desirable as an afternoon activity when compared to playing in one. Then he wondered if if Penelope was there. He half-hoped she was and half really hoped she wasn't, because he was probably going down in flames. She probably  _would_ show up for the Ravenclaw/Gryffindor game, but as that one came last, he was holding out hope that Oliver would find someone better by then, and Percy could go back to studying in peace.

The captains shook over the grounded Quaffle; as usual, Oliver and Marcus Flint were doing their level best to break each others' hands.

Then, at the sound of a piercing whistle that made Percy wince, they were in the air, and Percy did not have time to wonder whether injuring your opposite number before the game started was technically a foul. He was instead occupied with just trying very hard not to get in the Chasers' way. Only vaguely was he aware of Lee yelling about how Angelina had the Quaffle. That was ... presumably good. He understood the  _rules_ of Quidditch, but less so the tactics, and had never been totally clear on the strategical problem of possession and Bludger attraction (apparently, the Bludgers unguided would preferentially attack the player with the Quaffle), because there were a bunch of complicated guidelines about whether or not it was good, in any given situation, to actually - Wait, he'd been told not to worry about that. He had a job, or something.

With any luck he'd only have to do it once, but he might as well try while he was up here.

Where was the other Seeker? Something Higgins, Percy thought his name might be, a seventh-year Slytherin. Oliver had told him that the Slytherin Seeker was really good, and that his best choice would be to mark him and try to stall him in hopes that Gryffindor could pull a significant point lead. Which meant he basically had to try very hard be an annoyance ... and that, of course, meant flinging himself headlong into the way of speeding broomsticks. As opposed to doing the  _sensible_ thing and simply staying out of everyone's way, which would have been his natural inclination.

This was going to be a really long day, Percy thought to himself with yet another long-suffering sigh, and accelerated.


	8. She's A Nightmare, Honestly

The entirety of Gryffindor House was in a bit of a sulk, and Neville wasn't really sure why. Percy had, after all, done (he thought) quite a good job at the Quidditch match. The Slytherin Seeker had gone after the Snitch several times and been interrupted by Percy cutting him off or otherwise impeding him until it disappeared. It had added a lot of time to the game, during which Angelina and Katie and Alicia had added more points to the scoreboard, and Oliver had mostly prevented Slytherin from doing the same. Gryffindor had been eighty points up when Terence Higgs had finally dodged an unhappy-looking Percy and caught the Snitch. Which wasn't awful at all, they'd only lost by seventy.

Having the general impression that the Quidditch season was about marginal score - a single loss wasn't at all the end of the world - this somewhat confused him. After all, Quidditch matches (according to Ron) were routinely won by point margins in the hundreds. But for some unclear reason, everyone was acting like it was the worst thing in the world. Even Ron, with whom he had  _had_ an entire somewhat baffling and rather one-sided conversation about marginal score and the likelihood of winning the Cup, seemed annoyed about it! And meanwhile, Percy Weasley who had actually  _participated_ in the loss of the game, more than everyone else in the Cup really, had just been sitting in a corner with a big stack of books, aggressively not caring.

Neville thought sometimes that he really didn't understand people.

Still, he soon forgot about it entirely. On Halloween they were going to do a real charm in Charms class. This was an event that Neville had been, for some time, both looking forward to and dreading. He'd been doing half-decently at the stuff on paper, because when all the words were down on a page he couldn't mess them up by waving his wand left instead of right or whatever (which happened to him nigh- _constantly_  in Transfiguration). But as soon as they started doing real actual Charms work, he suspected that - no matter how simple and exciting it was - he would screw up somehow.

He felt sadly vindicated in his self-deprecatory prediction, once he'd managed to set fire to a feather in his attempt to cast a Levitation Charm. At least he was with Seamus, who had exactly the same problem. They went through three feathers before anyone else so much as dropped theirs, although Zacharias Smith - across the room - did manage to snap his in half quite soon after the third feather burned scorch marks into Neville and Seamus' table. Ron, who also couldn't do it properly, had gotten stuck with Hermione, who had done the Charm perfectly on her first try. When Neville, waiting for a new (fireproofed) feather, glanced over, she was lecturing the irritated redhead on his pronunciation.

Ron left Charms fuming. "She's a nightmare, honestly," he grumbled to Neville, shaking his head. "It's no wonder she hasn't got any friends." Lavender giggled, and Ron grinned at her.

The girl who had no friends did not show up for dinner, and eventually Neville became confused and worried enough to overcome his fear of speaking, and inquire. But when Neville asked hesitantly where Hermione had gone, to his alarm, Parvati gave him and Ron an extremely dirty look. "She's crying in the bathroom, because  _he_  was being  _rude_ ," she informed them, frowning at Ron. Apparently, Parvati did not hold with people being rude, even to someone that she insulted and mocked on a daily basis. Neville, unfortunately, was not yet familiar with the word  _hypocrisy,_  and in any case was distracted by the fact that he'd apparently offended Parvati's sensibilities just by being in the vicinity of Ron. He still wasn't used to that, though it happened to him a lot, really.

Ron scoffed at Parvati's glare, however. "She deserves it for being such a swot," he said, skewering a potato dismissively.

"Yes, well, that's not the point," said Parvati, dismissing the question of whether Hermione deserved mockery as so obvious as to not be worth discussing. Evidently, Neville had been wrong, as usual. The young witch explained, looking affronted on behalf of her House or possibly Ron's family name, "The  _point_ is that it's not an excuse for being so  _undignified_ \- "

As this discussion devolved rather rapidly into a heated argument about the proper level of politeness for telling people how awful they are, Neville tuned out. Instead he opted for nudging his carrots around quietly and wondering if they would really make him smarter. Maybe then he would understand why this conversation was taking place. He never did figure it out, though, because At that particular moment the great hall doors swung wide, and Professor Quirrell came running down the center aisle to face the head table, panting and stammering.

"T-t-t-troll!" he cried, "Troll in th-th-the d-dungeons!" As the whole head table stood up almost as one, the Defense Professor, coming to a gasping stop, looked up at Professor Dumbledore and said faintly, "Thought - thought you ought to know," and then collapsed to the floor.

There was an instant and very loud panic, followed very shortly afterwards by instant silence when Dumbledore began producing fireworks and thunderclaps from his wand. "Prefects, please escort your students back to the dormitories," he said with great calmness, his voice echoing in the ringing quiet. "We will finish the feast in our common rooms."

Stunned and terrified, Neville stuck closely to Ron as they followed Percy through the throng of confusion, all thoughts of Ron and Parvati's argument forgotten by all present. A  _troll_? Trolls were horribly dangerous, weren't they? And of course it must be, if the Professor of  _Defense Against the Dark Arts_ had been so frightened by it. Parvati and Lavender were clinging closely to one another, and Seamus and Dean were awkwardly leaning on each other with expressions that approximately indicated "we are obviously too cool to hold hands ( _aaaaahhh)_ ", which would have been funny if everyone else wasn't also rather frightened.

Only once the Gryffindors had all made it to the common room and Percy started calling roll did Neville abruptly realize, with a horrified sense of shock that made the room shift under him, what they had forgotten along with the propriety argument.

Lavender and Parvati appeared to be realizing, too, as Percy's droning voice reached the G's.

"Gifford!"

"Here!"

"Granger!"

Silence.

Percy blinked.

"Granger, Hermione?" he said again, sounding a little annoyed at having to repeat himself.

"She's not here," squeaked Lavender in a horrified voice, into the silence. "She wasn't at dinner, she was - she was in the girls' washroom - " (Ron's jaw had dropped, and he was looking at Neville in dawning horror.)

Percy, at this news, was dumbfounded. A few seconds passed as everyone looked at each other in alarm. "Right," Percy said shakily, and then again, "right," and he seized Oliver Wood by the arm, apparently because Oliver simply happened to be the person standing nearest to him. "Oliver, keep taking roll," he said firmly, and shoved the parchment and quill into his hand, and bolted out the door without further ado, leaving a rising tide of confused murmuring in his wake.

The Quidditch captain looked slightly alarmed. "Er," he said, scanning the list to find where Percy had left off. "Er, Hooper," and across the room a voice said a bit nervously, "Here!" The other prefects were giving him vaguely sympathetic looks, but no one looked particularly eager to volunteer, so Oliver kept calling names from there. It was not a pleasant process; he kept losing his place as he glanced nervously at the portrait hole, through which his roommate had so abruptly left.

_Percy, what are you doing_ _?_


	9. Gryffindoring

The thing was, Percy Weasley did not like emergencies.

Exciting events, sure, because they gave him a chance to be authoritative and prove he could keep order, without actually being in any danger. Particularly not danger of failure. He'd been delighted when McGonagall handed him the classlist, because it meant she thought he was the most responsible of the six Gryffindor prefects, even though he was the youngest.

This was exciting, and that was alright with him. He knew how to handle that, more or less. He ran down the stairs as fast as he could, down corridors, across the school, wishing he knew the castle half as well as Fred and George did. He was headed for the dungeons to let McGonagall know that they were a student short so that they could go find her. That was the proper thing to do. She would give him that sort of thin half-smile, the one that Gryffindors were always astonished to find their stern Head of House was capable of, and tell him he had done a good job. He could almost see it already.  _Thank you, Mr. Weasley. We will take it from here._

He was nearly to the dungeons when he heard a high-pitched scream, and he groaned out loud.

Now it was an emergency.

Percy did  _not like_  emergencies.

He nearly skidded into a wall as he changed course. Of course he ought to go tell McGonagall, but what kind of prefect would he be if he left the poor girl alone?

He smelled the troll before he saw it, and then there it was, having broken down the door of the girls' washroom, lumbering with its club, and swinging at a trembling first-year girl who was buried under splintered wood and pipes.

There was blood.

Percy said something very impolite that he would in other circumstances have reprimanded any of his siblings for saying within earshot of a first-year. Then, he did something which was impossibly brave and which he would later decide had been impossibly stupid: he ran into the room and placed himself squarely between the troll and the girl. She was crying and bleeding and definitely had some broken bones and clearly would not survive a second hit from that club, and even later when he thought about it, he didn't think he could possibly have done anything else, stupid as it had been. You don't abandon frightened eleven-year-old girls to trolls, you just - you just don't.

But it was still spectacularly, magnificently stupid.

The reason it was stupid was this: he didn't actually have a plan. This occurred to him about a second after he'd run into the room, and so as the club bore down on him he just pointed his wand in the general direction of the troll and said the first thing that came to mind, the Vanishing spell he'd started learning in McGonagall's class just a few weeks before. "Evanesco!" he said desperately, and to his surprise (and the troll's confusion) the club vanished.

Oh.

The troll stared at him dumbly as he stood there in front of the bushy-haired first-year, trying not to panic, and wishing he had a plan so that he'd know what to do next. Heroic stories of the rescue of maidens from monsters were not particularly enlightening on the subject of what you were supposed to do if you  _didn't_ have a magic sword or know a special troll-banishing spell. "Granger, we should really run," he said, his voice strained.

"I c-c-can't," she sobbed, "m-my leg's b-b-broken," and of course it was, that had been a completely stupid thing of him to suggest.

"Right," he said blankly. Could he carry her? Probably not - Bill or Charlie probably could, but he wasn't actually all that strong. He could try to levitate her, but that would be  _slow ..._ "Um..."

And then the troll, having stared at its empty fist for awhile, seemed to realize that it didn't actually need a club. As it reared back, roaring, Percy raised his wand and drew a blank. Then, for a long moment, all he could think as the fist flew towards him was  _oh god, oh god, I am a failure, she is going to die -_

 _-_  and Percy's vision went black.

* * *

Some indeterminate time later, faces swam into view above his head, and he slowly realized that he was lying in a bed. Not his own bed, so by process of elimination he was probably in the hospital wing. He was, surprisingly, not in any particular pain; magic healing was remarkable that way. Oliver Wood was sitting beside him, looking rather anxious. Percy wondered vaguely if this was because he was his only roommate, or because he was his only even-halfway-competent Seeker. Oliver did not provide any enlightenment on the subject, however, just cried " _Percy!_ " when he saw his open eyes. "You're alright!"

"Um," said Percy blankly, "yes, I suppose I am." He really hadn't been  _expecting_ to find himself alright, to be entirely honest. And that wasn't exactly his main concern. He was scanning the hospital wing and finding, to his burgeoning concern, that they were the  _only people there_. "Oliver," he said, his voice strained, "where's Granger?"

Oliver's enthusiasm vanished instantly. "She's gone," he said, and Percy knew the horror must have shown on his face ( _oh god I am a failure as a prefect_ _)_  because Oliver almost instantly qualified his statement, looking panicked. "Oh, Merlin, Perce, breathe, she's not  _dead_ , she's gone  _home_."

Percy gaped, and breathed deeply, and attempted to understand this. "She's - what?"

"You missed it, you were still asleep," explained Oliver, waving his hands vaguely. "Apparently McGonagall found you - she was in a right state when she told me. I came up here straightaway, of course." Percy was mildly surprised at how reassuring it was to know that someone in the world other than his mother cared about his well-being. He really ought to appreciate his friend more. Oliver continued, " ... so I was here when Granger's parents showed up. McGonagall had to call them of course, she was really hurt, they were talking about taking her to St. Mungo's for awhile!" Oh, wow. Percy was pretty sure the last time someone had had to go to St. Mungo's from the Hogwarts infirmary was sometime in the 1970s. Oliver was saying "- and there was this great row - "

Percy was starting to get a bad feeling about this. "About what?"

Oliver looked a bit uncomfortable. "Well," he said, "her parents said they thought Hogwarts was unsafe for children, and McGonagall and Dumbledore kept trying to reason with them, but they said they'd rather - rather she be safe than that she learn magic - "

"They  _made her withdraw_?" gasped Percy, utterly horrified by the prospect. He had heard of people being expelled, of course, and it was his greatest nightmare, but to have your  _own parents_ decide that you weren't allowed to attend Hogwarts anymore?

Oliver nodded. He clearly felt the same way. "They're Muggles," he explained rather sadly, "they don't get it, you know?" His own parents were Muggles, and so he seemed to understand, eve if he didn't like it. It was a mystery to Percy - he couldn't  _imagine_  his parents withdrawing him - but then he supposed Oliver would know better than he would. "But," Oliver continued, and smiled in a sort of reassuring way, "on the bright side, Perce, you're a bloody hero. McGonagall says you saved her life, you got a hundred points! Snape was  _livid_." He grinned at the memory. "Nobody's going to dare say  _you're_ not a Gryffindor anymore!"

A day ago, Percy would have been delighted at this judgment. He was told on a regular basis that he belonged in Ravenclaw (because of his studiousness) or worse yet, Slytherin (because of his ambition); he would not have admitted it, but he thought that actually being accepted as a Gryffindor would have been the nicest thing in the world. Now, he wasn't so sure.

Now, Percy was distinctly recalling the feeling of overwhelming pain as most of his ribs shattered, the sensation of crippling fear when he realized that he wasn't good enough. He had gone without thinking about it, without thinking about the consequences, and it had been brave, but it had also been exceptionally  _stupid_. It had been, in short,  _Gryffindor_. "No," he said, very firmly.

"No?" repeated Oliver, looking puzzled.

Percy stared at the ceiling. "No, I think that's quite enough Gryffindoring for the rest of my life, thank you."


	10. Becoming A Liar

The screaming lasted the entire car ride home.

"Mum, you can't, I'm a witch, I need to learn magic - "

"I can," said her mother, breathing very hard through her nose, "and I will."

"You don't seem to grasp," said her father sharply, "that you nearly died."

"Of course I do!" Hermione cried. "That's why I need to learn magic, to protect myself - "

"Not if you go to a proper school," retorted her mother, "where one doesn't need magic to survive past Halloween!"

Like that would do her much good, if one of the old pureblood lords decided her existence offended them (and given the number of their children she had shown up in the past two months, well). Hogwarts was probably safer for her than anywhere else in the world. "Mum, you heard Professor McGonagall, this sort of thing doesn't happen often, I was just in the wrong place at the wrong - "

"Be that as it may," interrupted her father, his knuckles turning white on the steering wheel, "it says a great deal about that place, that it was another student who had to rescue you, because the teachers were not competent enough!"

Hermione was immediately insulted. "Dad!" she said, "don't say things like that! Professor McGonagall is one of the most responsible, competent - "

"You nearly  _died_ ," hissed her mother angrily, "and this Professor McGonagall admitted freely that she arrived too late, that had this other wizard boy not saved you - "

Percy. (She really hoped he was okay. For the five seconds or so she'd been conscious after he got punched into a wall, she'd been vaguely aware that Percy was bleeding rather a lot.) "That's because he's a prefect, Mum, that's his job - "

"And you really," said her mother disbelievingly, "you  _really_  think you are safe in a place where the prefects are required to save the lives of the underclassmen, because the teachers cannot?"

"I'm sure McGonagall could've," insisted Hermione stubbornly, "she was just busy - important things - "

"Really. And what, pray tell, could be more important than the lives of her students?" demanded her mother, eyes flashing.

This argument was not going well. "Mum, they didn't know I was  _there_! She was busy getting all the students out of the way, she was keeping everyone else safe, it was  _my_  fault - "

"You are twelve," snapped her father, and it was the first time in her life Hermione had ever had her father so utterly dismiss her opinions on the basis of her age. Usually he encouraged her in her every precocious behavior, bought her whatever advanced books she wanted, listened when she had something to say. Her age had always been something to celebrate,  _look, my daughter's brilliant and she's only twelve_. But this was dismissal, cold adult rejection.  _You are twelve._ Hermione stopped cold, shocked.

"What?" she squeaked.

"You are  _twelve_ ," her father repeated with a steely voice, "and it is the responsibility of adults to keep you safe. If your teachers are not doing that, then they are poor teachers, whether or not you did something wrong."

That ... didn't make a great deal of sense to Hermione. Why shouldn't it be her fault? "But - "

"Hermione," said her mother tiredly, "it shouldn't matter whether or not you made a mistake. Everyone makes mistakes. The problem is that these people created an environment in which a single mistake very nearly got you killed. That is something that should, quite simply, not ever happen at a school."

They went through the same argument several times, because Hermione, brilliant though she was,  _was_ only twelve, and she did not understand. Even when she did start to understand, she rejected it, because when you're a Muggleborn witch and know how to read between the lines of history books, you know that the magical legal system doesn't care what your parents have to say about anything, and that the teachers at Hogwarts can't help you. You know that Lucretia Black-Prewett murdered forty-seven Muggleborn children and never got tried for a single one, and that she didn't stop when You-Know-Who died, and vigilantes had killed her in 1984 because the system didn't do a thing, and she wasn't the only one. That wasn't the kind of thing that would just  _go away_ if you tried to go to a Muggle school instead. When you knew that sort of thing, the idea that you  _weren't_ responsible for your own safety felt very weird for Hermione. But she  _tried_ to explain this, and was told she was being silly, and when they got home, Hermione, for the first time in her life, stormed up the stairs into her bedroom and slammed the door.

Professor Dumbledore had not taken away her wand; he told McGonagall he was holding out hope that she would be allowed to return once her parents calmed down. He had warned her, however, that even if she did not return to Hogwarts, she was not legally permitted to do magic. He had warned her, more importantly, that the Ministry would arrest her and snap her wand if she did. (Thinking of this made her clutch it closer to her, frightened.)

The headmaster had looked very serious and very sad when he said this, and Hermione had felt the distressing, sinking feeling that he really didn't think she had a chance of coming back at all. She supposed she was probably not the first Muggleborn he had seen withdrawn from his school by parents who didn't understand, and she probably would not be the last. What was she going to do? She had been so excited to go to Hogwarts, to learn to do magic, of all things -

\- and then, all at once, it had been ripped away from her, like a tenuous dream.  _No, you are not allowed to do magic._  She could do little more than turn matches into needles and levitate feathers; parlor-tricks at best, and ones she wasn't even allowed to use! You had to have school credentials, the headmaster explained; you had to be seventeen  _and_ have passed at least one of your OWLs, that was why Hagrid the gamekeeper wasn't allowed to do magic. Once she was seventeen the Ministry wouldn't be able to track her, they wouldn't show up at her house in an instant and arrest her and snap her wand in half - but without OWL accreditation it's still be  _illegal_  for her to do magic.

She stared down at her wand. She had already become so attached to it, and now it was practically nothing more than a useless stick of wood.

Hermione cried herself to sleep that night.

The next morning, however, she woke up with a plan practically fully-formed in her head, and she scrambled to her trunk, shifting through her piles of books in frenzied excitement.

Hogwarts wasn't the only magical school in the world.

Her parents knew about Beauxbatons - they'd seriously considered trying to send her there instead of Hogwarts, because her father was French - but they didn't know about the others. If they hadn't, Beauxbatons would have been a perfect choice, because unlike "Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry" there was nothing in the title that said outright that it was a school of magic. It was implied if you spoke French, yes, but one could argue easily that  _batons_ did not mean  _magic_ wands - it could mean a conductor's baton, or something. She could have just told them she'd found a nice French school and  _pretended_ it was a Muggle school, they probably wouldn't investigate if she pretended she'd given up ...

But that was a moot point, because her parents knew about Beauxbatons. She would need a different one. Soon Hermione found what she was looking for: the book in which she'd read about other schools, from which she had pulled the information "Hogwarts is supposed to be the best school there is, you know" - and it gave a list.

Her excitement became somewhat less, however, when she realized how few schools there really were that could fulfill her basic criteria. It had to be unknown to her parents (so not Hogwarts or Beauxbatons), not obviously magical by its name (so that crossed out Salem Witches' Academy and the Conservatoire Magie in Montreal), and capable of providing her a decent magical education (which, if her standard was 'will allow me to get legal certification to use my wand in Britain and Europe', crossed out almost everything else).

Hermione stared at the list she'd written down, crossed through with black lines. There was only one school left.

And Durmstrang didn't accept Muggleborns.


	11. Hermione Granger-Nott

_November 14, 1991_

_Dear Headmaster Karkarov,_

_My name is Hermione Granger-Nott, although most know me only by my adoptive parents' name, Granger. I have recently left Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, partway through the first term of my first year, and consider this a wonderful oppurtunity to pursue better education, such as at your fine school. I have of course appropriately researched your admissions procedures, and feel that I am quite up to the task. For your convenience I have signed this letter with an ink-print of my Nott family ring, which I hope is adequate proof of my blood status; I will of course bring the ring itself with me when I travel to your school, but I do not trust such a valuable heirloom to owl post. I am prepared to take the placement examination at any time that you would consider to be appropriate._

_With regard to my adoptive family, I am apologetic to say that they are Muggles. Near the end of Britain's Wizarding War, I was placed with them for my protection, and given the ring to identify myself if necessary. My biological parents subsequently died, failing to inform their relatives of where I had gone, and by the time anyone might have found out, I had become too much attached to my adoptive parents. Despite their lack of magic, they are rather pleasant to live with, and so I did not go out of my way to inform my magical relatives of the situation. In the interest of simplicity, I have told them that the school I wish very much to attend is a Muggle one, and I would appreciate it very much if you did not disabuse them of the inaccurate notion._

_Eagerly awaiting a reply at your convenience,_

_Hermione Granger-Nott_

This letter was, of course, well over halfway composed of complete lies, but Hermione Granger was not going to let anything trivial like blood status prevent her from going to a decent magical school.

"Can't learn magic!" she scoffed to herself as she wrote, "who does Mum think she's  _talking_  to - "

Hermione had taken a train into London on the pretext of buying schoolbooks. Her parents had relaxed their stern watchfulness when Hermione pretended tearful apology and assured them that they were completely right and that she'd find a good respectable Muggle boarding school to go to; she'd never actually  _needed_ to lie to her parents before and was a little bit horrified at how easy it turned out to be. A week after her summary removal from Hogwarts, she had convinced them to take her to Diagon Alley "to change back our wizarding money, since we won't need it anymore", and tested her theory that she could use magic in Diagon Alley because there was so much magic there already. This had turned out to be, as far as she could tell, true.

Of course, she'd had a very awkward (if brief) conversation, when she returned the second time, with Tom the Barkeep.

"Ey, it's you again! Thought yer parents said ya weren't comin' back!"

"Um ... yes ... it's ... it's a long story," she had stammered. As she left, she had made a mental note:  _Get better at lying when put on the spot._

In the meantime, she had to construct as convincing a lie as possible,  _ahead of time,_ to tell the people at Durmstrang. She'd gone to some effort to compose one that was convincing and self-consistent, and contained some kernels of truth. For one thing, she wasn't going to try to convince anyone that her "adoptive" parents were wizards; that wouldn't hold up to any close scrutiny. Instead, if all went well, other wizards would collaborate in pretending to her parents that nothing strange was happening at all. (She suspected that the sort of pureblood supremacists who ran Durmstrang would probably not have any ethical objection to lying to Muggles. After all, as far as they were concerned, Muggles weren't people.) And if they thought  _she_ was pureblood, she would (hopefully) be able to get through her schooling without anyone trying to kill her. Which was, of course, the point.

Hermione had read enough about the Wizarding War to know that her story about being left with caretakers for her own protection was not implausible.

The  _first_ thing she'd done was skim through a genealogy that had pictures in it. She wasn't going to pass for a Malfoy or a Black, that was for sure, but there were other, equally pureblood families in England, not all of them so pale-skinned as to be nearly blinding. Eventually she'd concluded that her best shot was the family Nott - there were some dead ones who could plausibly have had a child her age, and the family was generally dark-haired, dark-eyed, and prone to dark tans. She wasn't quite as dark-skinned as her father; she could pass for a Nott who spent a lot of time outside, she thought.

A few hours had been spent in a corner of the Leaky Cauldron, practicing whispering  _wingardium leviosa_ and moving mugs of beer around without anyone noticing. When she was able to pull a mug out of Tom's apron pocket without him startling and glaring at the mug like it was a disobedient child, she went back out into Diagon Alley.

She had to lurk for some time, but eventually she spotted a man near Flourish and Blotts who looked like the picture from the book. She waited for him to pause, reading a sign, and she hid in her little corner between the buildings and pointed her wand and prayed the target she was aiming for was actually in his pocket. Swish-and-flick. Hermione Granger was the best witch of her age and she could absolutely do this without panicking. " _Wingardium leviosa,_ " she murmured, and had to steady herself against the wall when she saw the glint of silver from the elderly wizard's pocket.

When a large silver ring, rolling gently a few millimeters across the ground, was several feet from where Hermione was standing, the man she was stealing from reached absently into his pocket, made an angry hissing noise, and wheeled in a circle. The crowd actually scattered around him like they thought he'd catch fire.

Hermione held stock-still, and kept her wand pointed at the ground, and wished she believed in luck.

When the ring levitated neatly up her side and into her pocket, he was still standing in the middle of the street. She couldn't see his expression at this distance, but  _presumably_ he was rather angry. She wrapped her hand around the ring in her pocket and found that her courage had failed her; she gave up standing still and ran into the bookstore. She could feel, suddenly, the ring  _pulling_ against her hand, trying to return to its owner. So Hermione grabbed the nearest book of Arithmancy, one-handed, and leaned against a wall and flipped through it, and tried desperately to look like an excited student and not a  _terrified thief_.

After she'd stopped hyperventilating, she was unwilling to leave the bookstore for a little while, but fortunately, that was where she'd been planning to go anyway. She'd got normal Muggle textbooks from a London shop, used and as cheap as possible. In Diagon Alley she could cast  _reparo_ on them, and then her parents wouldn't notice the discrepancy between the money she'd spent on them and the money they'd given her. If she had time, she might even read them; she did want to take GCSEs when she was the right age, just on principle. It would support the lie, if nothing else, and it really did seem like it would be a good idea to have Muggle certification as well as magical. Especially if something went terribly, horribly wrong.

So the rest of the money she'd been given, and the money she'd stolen, had gone straight towards buying as many books on as many magical subjects as she could possibly afford. She declined to buy nice or brand-new books in favor of getting as many as possible from the 'resell' bins, because the text was more important than the presentation. She had no idea when she'd next have a chance to be in a magical bookstore, and she really wanted to be prepared for Durmstrang's entrance exam.

When the cashier gave her a strange look, she had smiled and said as innocently as possible, "I'm buying books for my mum!" To illustrate the point she had waved her parchment (one-handed), on which she had indeed written a list of subjects she wanted to get books on, as illegibly as possible. The wizard had shrugged and moved on; Hermione's gold was just as shiny as anyone else's, and she hadn't bought anything illegal.

Around half an hour later, the ring had finally stopped pulling, and she'd breathed a little easier. (Though she held tightly to it for a little longer, just in case.)

And so when she had gone to the post office and written a letter, she had signed it with a new name, and stamped the heavy stolen ring in just enough ink to make an almost-legible imprint of the little moon-and-sword insignia on it. It wasn't meant as a seal ring, but it would do, she hoped.

And she paid the several Sickles to send owl post to Durmstrang. As the letter in its envelope disappeared in the back room, Hermione stood awkwardly in the lobby and thought,  _Well, I suppose that's that, then._

Once home, Hermione told her parents she needed to catch up since she'd been reading magical books instead of Muggle ones ("Good to see you're handling this responsibly, dear"), and locked herself in her room.

When an owl fluttered through her window a few days later, during which time she'd paused only to sleep and eat, she'd skimmed through every book she'd bought and was starting on rereading them for memorization purposes.

_November 21, 1991_

_Dear Miss Granger-Nott,_

_I would be delighted to offer a place here at Durmstrang Academy to a witch of such fine blood. We are quite used to unusual situations here, and I assure you that I will be of the utmost circumspection regarding your caretakers. I have enclosed a Portkey which will transport you to my office at precisely eleven-thirty AM on December 16th, the first Monday of our holiday break. You may take the placement examination then, and if you do well, you may begin classes at the start of the spring term. I shall furnish you with a supplies list appropriate to your score._

_I would also strongly advise that, if you are not currently fluent in German, you make every effort to acquire the language. Many of our students' mother tongues are English, Russian, or Bulgarian, but our classes take place in German._

_At your service,_

_Durmstrang Headmaster Igor Ilyevich Karkarov_

Naturally, the next several weeks were spent in continued, frantic studying, of only the magic books. The Muggle books could wait. Hermione had no idea what they might expect her to know, and so she simply studied everything that she had to hand.

On the day of her examination, she bid good-bye to her parents at breakfast, and as they headed off to work, walked towards the subway station. Instead of getting on a train, however, she bought a German language primer from the travel office and sat quietly on a bench reading it, as she waited for eleven-thirty. No one bothered her; Hermione suspected that she simply didn't look that interesting. She was only a little girl in stockings and a warm black coat, reading a book and bothering no one; she could have been any child going to visit relatives for the holidays.

At eleven-twenty-five, she got up and walked casually into the bathroom, and reached into her pocket for the little wooden button which she had been told was a Portkey. Hopefully, no one would notice that she failed to walk back out of the -

"Good avternoon!" said a smooth Slavic voice, and Hermione reoriented herself to find to her confusion that she was lying on the floor of a carpeted, wood-paneled office.

"Oh," she said in surprise.

"Not traveled by Portkey before?" inquired the thin, goateed man who must be Durmstrang's Headmaster. Hermione shook her head. "Strange, is it not?" She nodded, feeling slightly overwhelmed. "Your examination will begin shortly, Miss Nott." There was a small desk and chair set up in the corner. On it sat a thick stack of parchment, an inkwell, and a quill. "I have questions for you first, however."

"Oh," said Hermione, finding her voice as she scrambled off the floor, "yes, of course." It felt very strange to be addressed as  _Miss Nott,_  but of course she ought to have expected it. The sort of pureblood supremacists who ran this school were exactly the sort of people who considered her Muggle parents completely unimportant, and so to them their name would be equally irrelevant. She had to shake off her feeling of unease before she could begin.

 _I will pretend not to mind. I want to learn magic. I have to learn magic,_ she told herself. It was potentially a matter of life and death.

She repeated the story she'd written in her letter. Karkarov asked to see her family ring, and she produced it from her pocket ("It's my father's, I think, they did not have time to forge my own for me during the war, so it is too big for me to wear"). He had a few probing questions about her relationship with her parents, and why she'd left Hogwarts. Hermione was proud of the steadiness of her voice, as she said that the point of having Muggle caretakers, the reason she liked them, was that they didn't have the mental capacity for pureblood politics, which she disliked. "They think I am an ordinary Muggle child," she explained, "and so they do not  _bother_ me. I can study in peace, and I am much more interested in academia than anything else. This is also why I left Hogwarts - I did not find their classes ... sufficiently stimulating."

"I see," said the Headmaster of Durmstrang Institute, nodding. He seemed pleased with this answer. Presently he gestured her to her seat. "Begin. This test is not timed. Please attempt to answer all of the questions," he said.

The examination was very, very long, but it was thankfully written in English. By the time Hermione had finished writing, her hand was cramping terribly and the sun had gone rather low in the sky. Headmaster Karkarov appeared to be ignoring her completely. But the moment she stopped writing, he looked up from whatever it was he was doing at his much larger desk, and inquired, "Done, Miss Nott?"

"Um - yes, sir," she said, steeling herself for the practical portion. She was already exhausted, and she hadn't been able to  _try_ any of the spells she'd read about in the last few weeks, but she would do her best.

To her surprise, however, the headmaster picked up her test and turned away, showing no sign of asking her to do anything else. When she hesitantly inquired, Karkarov laughed. It was a strange, strained noise, as if it did not quite belong. He was not a man designed for laughter. "Ve are not permitted to ask you to do magic, Miss Nott, until you haf enrolled."

That made sense, she supposed. Otherwise she might set off some sort of anti-underage-magic sensors. "Oh."

"Please vait, I shall score this." Hermione was expecting a long wait, but she found herself surprised again. Karkarov simply waved his wand over the stack of parchment, said a number of words in German that she did not know, and then turned to look at her with abject astonishment on his face. She blinked. "You vere first year at Hogwarts?" he demanded. " _First_? Dropped out after less than a year?"

"Yes, sir?" said Hermione, puzzled and slightly anxious.

"You score for  _third_!" said the Bulgarian wizard, pointing almost accusingly at the paper. "Third, as if you took mid-term exams a week ago!"

"Oh," said Hermione, who could not help but smile as the feeling of relief washed over her. "So, I passed, then?"

And so it was that Hermione Granger, first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, became Hermione Nott, third year at Durmstrang Institute, because she is so good at studying that she learned two years of introductory material in less than a month.

And that says everything that you need to know about Hermione Granger, really.


	12. Study Habits

They felt the loss keenly.

When the rest of the first-year Gryffindors heard that Hermione had been withdrawn, the sense of guilt - and of loss - spread through the entire group almost instantly, and then hung over them like a dark cloud. With Hermione gone, there were only six of them - Parvati and Lavender, Ron and Neville, and Dean and Seamus. Every time a teacher asked a question in class, everyone turned to look for Hermione's eager hand and found it absent. They hadn't realized just how much she was a part of their group until she wasn't there anymore, and every one of them felt awful for having excluded her so badly as they had. Not one of them had tried to do anything about it.

Not one of them had bothered to think about what they were doing, and they'd nearly gotten a classmate killed. They would have, if not for Percy. That, in short, made them terrible people. Their classes were silent and gloomy; their teachers looked on them with concern as they trudged around listlessly and barely listened to the lectures. None of them were doing very well on any of their work, but no one really had the heart to call them on it, not even Snape.  _  
_

When they'd all been wallowing in guilt for about a week and a half, Ron Weasley called a meeting.

Parvati and Lavender puzzledly followed Seamus up the boys' staircase, since they were allowed to do that, and with that the entire first-year Gryffindor class was convened in the first-year boys' dormitory, since Ron had already fetched Neville and Dean. Ron did not beat around the bush. "I think we're being stupid about this," he said flatly.

Parvati looked deeply offended. "What d'you mean? We can't  _not be sad_ , Ron, because unlike you, some of us actually  _care_  - "

"Of course I care!" he snapped angrily, and Parvati subsided rather confusedly. "No, obviously we deserve to feel bad,  _especially_  me, and I do!" Indeed, he'd been moody and depressed ever since Halloween, even moreso than the others, visibly blaming himself for what had happened. No one had really been able to tell him it  _wasn't_ his fault, which hadn't helped. He forged on. "But there's no point in just - like - being  _pointlessly_  sad! We should be doing something!"

"Like what?" asked Seamus curiously. He had fetched the girls when asked, but he really didn't have any more of an idea what was going on than they did.

"Neville thought of an idea," said Ron, and Neville winced as everyone looked at him. He hated being the center of attention; that was why he'd asked Ron to do this on his behalf. "And I think it's a great idea. Hermione was all about learning and getting good grades and stuff, right?"

There was a chorus of "yeah, I guess"-type answers. "But what's your  _point_ , Ron?" asked Lavender rather snippishly. She, like Parvati, was still rather annoyed with Ron. They blamed him specifically for Hermione's near-death, with admittedly good reason. Lavender insisted that  _her_ teasing had been much less harmful, which might or might not be true; no one really wanted to argue about it, when she clearly felt almost as guilty as Ron.

"If this is just another rant about how stupid homework is, I'm leaving," declared Dean with some asperity, getting up from his bed. He was a sports fan, but contrary to the stereotype, still had a better work ethic than most of his roommates (he was doing his work rather  _badly_  as of late, but he was at least  _doing_ it, which was better than Ron and Lavender were managing).

"No!" said Ron forcefully, and Dean sat back down in surprise at Ron's vehemence. "No, Neville's idea was, if we're going to, like, remember her properly, or whatever, shouldn't we be studying, not moping?"

The sheer bizarreness of  _Ron Weasley_  suggesting that everyone should study more silenced the room for several minutes. He did not suddenly declare it a joke, like they had might have guessed, and the silence lengthened. Strangely, Ron seemed extraordinarily serious. As they all tried to figure out what was going on, he looked around at them expectantly, waiting for an answer.

"That ... sort of makes sense, actually," said Parvati eventually, looking bemused.

She wasn't the only one caught off guard. "So you're proposing we ... what, form a study group?" asked Seamus, frowning.

"Yeah, basically," agreed Ron, nodding. "Neville said, and I agree with him, that if Hermione's not going to be here to be brilliant and answer questions and things, we're just going to have to  _all_  be smarter to make up for it." They were all still giving him dubious looks, and he clenched his fists in determination. "If we just keep being stupid and lazy," he said, "we're still the same people that almost got her killed." Ron's face took on a fierce light. "And I, for one, really  _don't_  want to be that guy."

Hesitantly, Neville said, "Me, neither."

After that quiet declaration, in the face of Ron's bright orange ferocity, no one else could quite decline.

From that day forward the six Gryffindors, who in a better world might have been eight, or even ten, met every day in the library after classes, with their books and their parchment and their quills and ink. After Ron's impromptu speech, there were no more loud declarations, no more arguments, no nagging or complaining, no fuss at all. No one wanted to talk about it, but they all wanted to do something. So they just all, without discussing it, showed up every day to sit at the same table in the corner, and got out their books, and worked.

By the end of term, Seamus had stopped setting things on fire in Charms class, and all six of them had succeeded at least in getting shiny matches in Transfiguration, though only Dean could make his pointy enough to draw blood. They took turns taking notes in History of Magic class, and proofread each others' essays. As they left their last Potions session of the term, Neville announced with a gleeful smile that he hadn't melted a single cauldron since before Halloween.

Parvati Patil sighed, smiled, patted him on the shoulder, and said wryly, "Small victories."


	13. Weasleys & Riddles

The Weasleys were the only Gryffindors to stay at Hogwarts for Christmas, since their parents were visiting Bill in Egypt. So they had the run of the tower, which the twins at least took full advantage of. Ron, however, was by now very attached to the idea that studying made him a better person. And if there wasn't much you could say about his enthusiasm for knowledge, still it would be hard to suggest that he was the kind of person who lacked for stubbornness. So he picked up his books and his stack of imperfect homework assignments and sat with Percy, studying close enough to the fire that they could roast things and eat them as they worked.

Percy answered every question Ron asked him, not seeming bothered in the least by doing this while he was writing essays or drawing puzzling diagrams that Ron suspected were Arithmancy. Occasionally, he even assented to take a break and play chess. So Ron, fascinated and feeling like he was learning more than he had in the last several weeks of class as he figured out the flaws in his first term's work, ignored Fred and George every time they tried to draw him into a game of Exploding Snap or toss-the-salamander. The twins were utterly baffled by this behavior, but after Percy hexed them a few dozen times they left their brothers alone.

Eventually Ron asked, a little hesitantly, "Percy, why are you helping me so much?"

Percy had actually looked up from his work that time. Up til that point he'd been absently answering questions without really pausing in his writing, smiling faintly and giving explanations that actually were somewhat more helpful than those in the textbook, but at this his quill stilled. He gave Ron a puzzled look. "You're my  _brother_ ," he pointed out, as though this should have been extremely obvious.

It probably really should have occurred to someone, Ron thought in bemusement, that it was their fault. The reason Percy stayed to himself among the family was simply that no one ever actually asked him to do anything; no one ever even  _tried_ to involve him. He must have once tried, but eventually Percy had started to give up - he must have felt as if he were unwanted. It wasn't as if they'd done anything to discourage the feeling. Thereafter, Ron resolved not only to study with him, but to play chess with his brother more often. Percy was a better opponent than any of his three dormmates, after all.

(When he said this out loud, he'd been a little surprised at how widely his brother smiled.)

* * *

On Christmas day, Percy ambled downstairs with a faint look of pleased bemusement on his face. He was wearing his Weasley sweater, which was helpfully labeled  _P_  for  _prefect_  (Ron snorted), nibbling absently on a piece of fudge that probably had come with it, and staring at a piece of parchment. The twins, who had been throwing tree ornaments at each other, paused, looking curious. "What's up, Perce?" they chorused. Ron looked up from feeding cockroach clusters to Scabbers as Percy laughed. It sounded oddly genuine, deeper and warmer than Percy's usual uncomfortable, nervous snicker.

"Oliver," he said, in tones of faint amazement, "sent me a set of OWL review books." The other Weasleys exchanged surprised glances. It was common knowledge that Oliver Wood had found something Quidditch-related to give to Percy for every single Christmas and birthday since the two had found themselves the only Gryffindor boys in their year, in a somewhat misguided and only haphazardly successful attempt to convince his roommate to 'appreciate the sport properly.' Percy, still looking faintly astonished, held out the note, which Fred accepted and read aloud, because Percy was self-conscious about that kind of thing. The twins were never ones to shy from attention, even if it was only attention from Ron and Percy.

"' _Since I know you wanted them. They're not brand new, couldn't afford it -_  '" Fred rolled his eyes. "As if anyone but Malfoy could. '  _\- so I had my sister do a bunch of repairing charms on hers,'_  huh, Oliver has a sister?"

"Four years older than us," agreed Percy absently, still looking puzzled. "Graduated the year before you two got here."

"Oh." Fred looked back down at the note. " _'Hope you'll find them useful. I know I keep teasing you about exams, but I know they really are as important to you as the Cup is to me, even if I don't get it. So - sorry about that?'_  Aww, how sweet," Fred drawled teasingly, and gave Percy a look that said he was probably going to mock him about this for the rest of the holiday. But he did seem to grasp that this was at least somewhat serious. "' _And I'll make sure you have plenty of time to study if you stop looking at me like I killed your owl every time we have practice, okay? Your friend, Oliver.'"_ Fred snorted. "Oh my god, Percy, do you really do that?"

"Um - yeah, a bit," admitted Percy, turning a bit red. It never failed to make Oliver look deeply unhappy, but it had consistently failed to prevent Percy from getting dragged out onto the pitch anyway.

"Geez, no wonder Oliver's been all sulky at practice lately," whistled George.

"You are the worst friend of  _all time_ ," declared Fred dramatically.

Percy snatched the note back, looking annoyed. "I am going to  _try_  to be  _better_ , okay?" he said sharply through gritted teeth, pocketing the note and crossing his arms. If Oliver could admit studying was important, he owed it to his friend to at least  _try_ to not ruin his Quidditch dreams.

Fred shrugged. "That's all we ask," said George brightly.

Thereafter, when term resumed, Percy politely asked Ron to watch his books and followed the team outside under his own power whenever they had practice. And in turn, true to his word, Oliver Wood made a concerted effort not to prevent his roommate from having time to study for his OWLs. To the delight of the rest of the team, Percy was a much better flier when he was neither terrified nor furious.

* * *

" - just saying it's weird, is all," said Fred as he toweled his hair dry.

"What's weird, Fred?" inquired Angelina from across the locker room, where she was struggling with the laces on her armbraces. Given the sheer density of magic around Hogwarts, it wasn't exactly  _surprising_  that they had somehow developed a malicious tendency to re-tie themselves every time she tried to take them off, but it was still extremely  _annoying_. "If  _you_  two are concerned, I think the rest of us should be - er - " She stalled out, looking like she wasn't totally sure what the appropriate solution was to something that alarmed the Weasley twins.

"Running away very fast?" suggested Alicia dryly. It was, after all, widely agreed that the best way to handle anything Fred and George were involved in was to not be near it. Angelina nodded firmly. Good answer.

"Maybe!" agreed George brightly, undaunted. "See, did you know that our little brother Ron - "

" - who four months ago totally believed us when we told him he could use a rhyme to turn Scabbers yellow - " interjected Fred, waggling his fingers dramatically. Charlie had tried the same joke on Percy some four years before. Perhaps predictably, Percy had already read his textbooks, and so was not fooled. Ron, however ...

George finished, in a tone which suggested great amazement, " - is getting higher marks than most of the  _Ravenclaws_  in his year?"

"For the last time, George," said Percy sharply, "it is  _not_  - "

"I'm not George, I'm Fred," said the twin he had just addressed, rather indignantly. As it was in fact the one Angelina had called Fred less than thirty seconds ago, this was a plausible objection, but Percy was entirely unapologetic. He just rolled his eyes, and gave George a deeply skeptical look. There was a distinct silence; and then after it had stretched on uncomfortably for awhile, George gave up. "Fine, I am George," he admitted mulishly. The only thing the twins had never been able to pull on Percy since they began Hogwarts was the twin switch, though they had never stopped trying. It frustrated them to no end that he could invariably tell them apart, and refused to explain how.

(Percy would deny until his dying day that he had learned to cast identifier spells silently sometime in his third year, after outright begging Flitwick to teach him, and hit his brothers with them every time they walked into a room.)

Percy grinned a little mischievously. It was still a little weird for everyone that instead of taking a running leap towards critical melting point as OWLs approached, Percy actually seemed to be mellowing under the influence of Oliver and his brothers. But at least no one twitched in shock when he smiled like that anymore; progress. "As I was saying," he said smoothly, ignoring the sulky look George was giving him, "it is not a crime to get good grades. I, for one, am very proud of Ron."

"At least Ginny will probably still be fun," grumbled Fred, apparently giving up Ron as a lost cause.

"Who's Ginny?" inquired Katie.

"Our little sister. Great shot with a dungbomb," explained George.

"And no one ever suspects the little one!" added Fred brightly. Apparently everyone found this description outrageously adorable, because all three Chasers were squealing all the way back up to the castle about how cute it was that they were teaching their baby sister to follow in their footsteps. This, despite Angelina and Alicia having been complaining less than an hour previously about how annoying it was to have to put up with the twins in classes.

(Percy, despite being - as far as he knew - the only member of his family who currently had a girlfriend, would be the first to admit that he really didn't understand girls.)

* * *

"Hey, that's weird," said Fred, frowning down at the Map as he leaned against the wall. George was a few feet from him, scanning the wall for the entrance to a secret passage the Map indicated would lead down several floors from the Defense classroom down to Transfiguration, which would save them a walk on Tuesdays and Thursdays. More importantly, it would confuse and impress the rest of their classmates, which was of course the point.

George looked up from where he was examining a wall sconce under wandlight. "Somebody awake?" he inquired curiously. It was past midnight, and Fred's keeping an eye on the Map in case of interruption was mostly a useful habit. They hadn't been expecting to run into anyone; Filch was out on the grounds delivering Ron and Malfoy to detention with Hagrid (maybe Ron wasn't a lost cause after all), and periodically checking the seventh floor showed that Mrs. Norris was skulking around Ravenclaw Tower. The Map didn't show everything all at the same time, but it showed you whatever you thought was important, which was just as good if you had a good sense of priorities.

"Apparently," said Fred, "It's - Quirrell, I think - just look." He pointed at the Map with his lit wand, and George paced over and looked, too. Fred had been thus far not worried about Quirrell, who was pacing around his office down the hall but showed no signs of leaving. But a moment ago, Quirrell's name had started  _flickering_ , and going all blurry, and then it showed "Tom Riddle" instead, and then blurred out and went back to "Quirinus Quirrell," and then changed again, flickering quicker and quicker.

George didn't bother to say anything affirmative, like 'Oh, yeah, that  _is_ weird,' or 'Nice catch'; there was no point. It was simply a brute fact of the universe that they had the same opinions about everything, that they tended to think the exact same thoughts when given the same information. The only time they ever needed to talk to each other was if, like a few moments earlier, they were observing different things. (This was why, perhaps, it had been traditional to kill one of a pair of magical twins even as late as the previous century.) Instead George pulled a scrap of parchment from his pocket, and a quill that thankfully still had some ink, and scratched onto it  _Tom Riddle,_ so that it could be looked up later.

As they watched the name settled, and then Tom Riddle stood stock-still in the middle of his office for a long second - and then he dove out the window. Fred and George made a collective and involuntary gasping sound of shock; they were on the fifth floor, and it was a very long drop to the ground. The Defense professor did not apparently seem to mind this obvious problem; as the Map followed him across the grounds, he sped across it at a rather alarming speed, and disappeared into the Forbidden Forest.

The Weasley twins concluded that he probably had a broomstick. Not being able to see unanchored inanimate objects like that was one of the Map's limitations, after all. Although there wasn't any sensible reason for a teacher to have a broomstick just lying around in their office, there was no other way to explain his apparent failure to experience injury from falling five stories. For that matter Professor Quirrell seemed like the type to be terrified of broomstick riding, but it wasn't like he was  _immune to gravity_ or something ...

Then they spotted Mrs. Norris coming down the steps, and bolted in a hurry, saving the mystery for later.


	14. Detention

"This is your fault."

" _My_  fault? You're the one who was stealing."

"Longbottom  _left_ it! It's not my fault he's a hopeless idiot!"

"It's your fault  _you're_ an obnoxious git!"

"I'm not the one who turned a perfectly respectable flying contest into a wrestling match!"

"You said 'come and get it', dumbass!"

"And ruined a very expensive shirt in the process, might I add."

"Oh, what a  _tragedy_."

"Boys!" interrupted Hagrid gruffly, "quiet down now, we're goin' inter the Forest an' you don' wanna go attractin' attention."

"We're  _what_?" said Draco in a high-pitched tone of horror, abruptly distracted from glaring at his redheaded nemesis. "You can't make us go in there! There's - werewolves, and things!" Ron snorted, and the Slytherin consciously calmed his tone. After taking a breath, he instead said sharply, "My father will hear about this!"

"We're goin' inter the Forest," said Hagrid implacably, ignoring this threat entirely. "Aren' no werewolves, but there's plenty what's dangerous in there, so yeh stick close t'me, yeh hear?" Then, as Ron and Draco had a very stressed-out and silent contest in which they each tried to pretend not to be as scared as the other, he explained about the dying unicorns, and what they were looking for. The two first-years in his charge exchanged frightened glances, and then realized what they'd just done and glared at each other instead. Evidently, neither could figure out how to complain about this without appearing frightened, so they ended up saying nothing. Nervously, they followed Hagrid into the Forest, with Fang ambling along behind them.

It was an unnerving and quiet half-hour before a flash of silver caught their attention. Ron and Draco both turned and pointed, which spawned a whispered "I saw it first!" "No you didn't, I did!" argument, cut short sharply when Fang made a very unhappy whining noise and backed away several steps. Hagrid stepped through the trees, hefting his substantial crossbow, and gestured to them to follow. The source of the silver soon became apparent: unicorn blood, reflecting the light from Hagrid's lantern. And a unicorn a few feet away, with something dark and cloaked leaning over it.

"Hold this," said Hagrid brusquely, shoving the lantern into Draco's hand. It was larger than his head and caused him to stagger somewhat with its weight; but with eyes narrowed at Ron's smirk, he refused to complain. Hagrid leveled his crossbow at the stranger and said, "Oi! You! Git away from tha poor beast - "

It looked up from its meal, and all they could see of its face were fangs dripping silver blood and glowing red eyes. The thing - for it must have been a thing, not a man - emitted a horrifying screeching noise and leapt. Like a bat spreading its wings it left the ground and arrowed straight for the kids, still screeching, looking very much like a monster straight out of Hell. All pretense of bravery forgotten, Draco shrieked and turned to run. Ron, for his part, tried to duck and draw his wand at the same time, which caused him to tangle himself in his cloak and sent him sprawling unceremoniously to the ground.

For a split horrible second Ron was convinced he was going to die; and then a crossbow bolt the size of a spear thudded into the side of the monster's chest, and it twisted in the air, its momentum thrown wildly sideways by the weapon. The screeching sound turned to horrid gargling and the creature bolted, vanishing into the trees with alarming speed. Hagrid shouldered his crossbow and strode over to Ron, lifting him to his feet and shaking him slightly to dislodge the dirt. "Y'alright, Ron?"

"Um," said Ron, his voice a bit squeaky. He hazarded, "Um, yeah, I, kinda?"

The gamekeeper nodded approvingly, as Ron disentangled himself from his cloak and got shakily to his feet. "Now where'd that ruddy Malfoy go?" grumbled Hagrid, picking up a whining Fang and scanning the trees. Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately), Draco had left with the lantern, and the light was still visible at this distance. Ron, trying to get his breathing under control, followed at a disjointed jog as Hagrid strode into the treeline without much concern for the presence or absence of an actual path.

When they found Malfoy, he was surrounded by centaurs with bows drawn, and looked very much like he would dearly have preferred to stay and be menaced by the mysterious beast Hagrid had shot.

"Is this yours, Hagrid?" said the tallest of the centaurs, a dark brown creature with piercing green eyes and a distinct expression of distaste. He was looking at Draco as if he were an unwelcome dog who had urinated on the carpet. If Ron had not been busy still trying to stop hyperventilating, he would have been better able to express how funny he found this. Still, he made a mental note to tell Neville, who would probably enjoy the mental image. The centaur continued, looking rather annoyed, "Ronan told us you were hunting the great evil that plagues our forest," he shot a red-haired centaur a sharp look, "but he failed to mention that you were bringing foals."

Hagrid sighed. "Yep," he said apologetically, "sorry 'bout that, Magorian, that's my fault, I ought've said summat. Professor Dumbledore wanted 'em given a sharp scare; 'spect he thought we'd not find nothin' tonight." He gave Ron a look that was probably supposed to have been reassuring. Ron mostly still felt like he was in shock, but it did make him feel slightly better that Hogwarts detention did not  _normally_ involve being almost murdered by horrible unicorn-eating vampire bat things.

"Ah, but you did find something," said the red-haired centaur whose name was Ronan, looking delighted. "And you're a bolt lighter than usual."

"Aye, shot the bugger," said Hagrid, which made several centaurs look grudgingly pleased. He continued, "with any luck it'll be movin' slow. I gotta take these kids back up ter the school." As he said this, he reached between a few centaurs, who neatly sidestepped. Hagrid caught Draco by the back of his shirt, picking him up and then setting him down next to Ron, who shot him a viciously delighted look that said very clearly  _I am never letting you live this down, ever._ Hagrid bent his head at Magorian; the motion was somewhat awkward due to the enormous boarhound he was still carrying in one arm, but was at least recognizable as a respectful bow. "Lemme know if there's anythin' else I can do ter help, aye?"

"We shall, Hagrid," said Magorian gravely, "your assistance has been appreciated as always."

A black centaur, who had been staring up at the sky for the last several minutes, said, "Vega and Altair are unusually bright tonight, have you noticed that, Magorian?"

Hagrid took this as his cue to leave, shooing Ron and Draco ahead of him and dropping Fang to the ground again in order to retrieve his lantern from Draco. Neither of the kids spoke, but Ron kept shooting Draco rather smug looks, to which Draco responded with glares while unhappily trying to smooth his ruffled hair.

Once they had crossed the tree line, Ron took a deep and amazingly reassuring breath and then said, "What did he mean about the stars, Hagrid?" He couldn't remember which stars had been mentioned, but had at least been paying enough attention in Astronomy recently to recognize the words as names of stars.

Hagrid shook his shaggy head unhappily. "Yeh never know, with them," he grumbled. "Might mean peace an' good huntin', might mean we're all gonna die. Don' bother askin', neither."

"What  _was_ that - that  _thing_?" demanded Draco, who had taken slightly longer to regain his voice, but had what he clearly considered a much more pressing question.

"Can't rightly say," said Hagrid, shrugging. "At any rate, I hope you lot've learned yer lesson about breakin' the rules." He nodded to Filch, who was grinning nastily at the rattled first-years. "Off yeh go, then."

As soon as Hagrid turned and left, Ron turned and grinned at Draco as they walked behind Filch back into the castle. "You ran!" he said, entirely delighted. "You ran away, you coward!" No longer in the presence of the terrifying monster, he found it much easier to mock the Slytherin for this failing.

"You would've, too, if you hadn't tripped and  _fallen_ like an idiot," complained Draco.

"I was trying to draw my wand!" protested Ron.

Draco rolled his eyes and drawled, "Fat lot of good that did you."

"Didn't get me almost shot full of arrows by centaurs, neither!"

"They were not going to  _shoot_ me," said Draco confidently, much more confidently than he might have while there were actually arrows pointed at him. "They wouldn't dare!"

Ron snorted. "The big one looked like he wanted to cut your head off and put it on his wall for a decoration."

"Shut  _up_ ," snapped Draco snippily, and turned on his heel to head down the steps to the dungeons. Ron shrugged and headed for the stairs, feeling secure in the knowledge that at least if he'd been terrified, he'd been  _less_ terrified than Malfoy, and that made him a proper Gryffindor. Let the Hat tell him he ought to be in Slytherin  _now_.

* * *

Fred and George caught Ron halfway up the stairs to Gryffindor Tower, and chorused, "How was detention?", grinning. They'd just narrowly escaped Mrs. Norris and were in much better spirits than their brother, and felt it their filial duty to annoy him as much as possible before he went to bed.

"We had to go into the Forbidden Forest," grumbled Ron. "It was  _awful_. Hagrid was looking for some monster that was killing unicorns, and we  _found_ it, and it tried to kill me, and then Hagrid shot it and it scarpered. Pig snout." Then he grinned, as he climbed through the portrait hole. "Bright side, Malfoy almost got shot by a herd of centaurs, we had to rescue him."

To his surprise, the twins did not laugh or even smile as they followed him through the portrait hole. "Killing unicorns, you say?" said Fred curiously.

"In the forest?" added George.

"Um ... yeah?" said Ron.

" _Fascinating_ ," chorused the twins, and then were up the stairs and out of sight before Ron could ask them what they meant.


	15. Charlie Will Be Proud

Oliver clapped Percy on the back as they got ready to head out onto the pitch. "You'll do  _fine_ , Perce," he said, "you've gotten way better in practice!" Percy's total disbelief must have shown on his face, because Oliver changed tack. "Besides, their Seeker's not that great. The reserve's way better, this third-year kid called Diggory who's already calling half the shots, but he's just reserve. Hufflepuff never swaps starting players until they graduate, not unless someone gets hurt, so Hornby's still gonna be the one you're flying against."

Fred said, "We'll be sure not to hurt him, then," and Alicia giggled.

Oliver stretched, and grinned at Percy, clearly trying to be reassuring. "Just do what you did last time, keep the game running as long as you can." It felt like a tall order; making the game run  _longer_ was the exact  _opposite_ of what he actually wanted, especially since it mostly involved flinging himself dramatically into other peoples' way in order to distract them. But Oliver was looking confident, so he tried to nod as the Quidditch captain said, "We'll be fine. Give us enough time and we've  _got_ this."

Percy did not feel nearly so confident.

Still, flying had turned out to be quite a lot of fun when he didn't work himself into a panic about it. He found that if he flew high enough, he could keep an eye on the opposing Seeker and even watch the game, which gave Lee Jordan's commentary a great deal more meaning (he could actually observe Angelina shooting across the field shortly before Lee yelled "GRYFFINDOR SCORES!", for example). And if he stuck around the Hufflepuff Seeker closely enough, he could get in the way every time John Hornby (he was, if Percy recalled correctly, in seventh year, like Slytherin's Seeker) looked like he'd spotted something.

It wasn't as hard as he was expecting, once he stopped stressing out about it so much. He just intermittently cut across Hornby's trajectory, causing the Hufflepuff to veer off course in alarm. Practice had paid off (he spent most of the Gryffindor practices rehearsing exactly this maneuver, getting in the way of the Chasers). By an hour into the game, his yellow-robed opponent looked like he was spitting nails, Gryffindor was sixty points in the lead, and Percy was starting to understand why everyone enjoyed this game so much.

Percy was rather proud of himself, especially since he was fairly certain his broomstick was outmatched. He was flying Charlie's old Nimbus 1000, which had been given to him in his second year when Charlie mysteriously acquired a Cleansweep Seven. (Charlie had flatly refused to explain to anyone where he'd gotten the money for that broom, which at the time had been the best on the market, but Bill was prone to breaking into helpless giggles whenever asked about it and Percy suspected that there had been illegal activity involved.) The decades-old broom had been good in its time, and Percy was growing quite fond of it, but Hornby had a modified Silver Arrow that Percy was positive could outpace him, if he missed his block and found himself in a race.

At which point they'd lose, since they had to be  _more than_ a hundred and fifty points in the lead for Percy's failure not to lose them the game. They were only winning by sixty; Gryffindor was better than Hufflepuff, but not  _that_ much better.

He was still thinking gloomily about this when a glint of gold drew his gaze away from the Bludger he'd just narrowly ducked and to the Snitch, which was hovering innocuously a few feet from his left ear. Percy reached out almost automatically, forgetting for a moment that he was in the middle of the air. He lost his grip on his broomstick, spun crazily, and dropped nearly thirty feet before he righted himself, dizzy.

To his immense surprise, what appeared to be three different Golden Snitches were fluttering in his several hands. "Oh," said Percy, blinking, as the image resolved itself into one Snitch in his right hand, wings fluttering around his fingers. "I ... oh, goodness, how pretty." He had never actually examined a Snitch close-up before, since the flesh-memory enchantments meant they weren't allowed to use real Snitches for most practices. This one was glinting in the sunlight, and Percy was utterly distracted by it, nearly unaware of the eruption of sound that had just happened in the stands as Lee Jordan announced in surprised delight that Gryffindor had just won the game.

(By two hundred and ten points, some part of Percy's brain noted absently. With their loss by seventy last time, they were now at a positive hundred and sixty. Slytherin had beaten Ravenclaw by only twenty and Ravenclaw had flattened Hufflepuff by two hundred, so that meant Slytherin had positive ninety and Ravenclaw positive one-eighty. Even if Slytherin beat Hufflepuff by a similar margin, Gryffindor had a shot at winning the Cup this year if they beat Ravenclaw by enough in May ... )

Percy's reverie, during which he had sunk slowly to the ground still staring at the Snitch, was interrupted by the twins tackling him.

" _Well done!_ " they crowed in unison.

Percy finally noticed the crowd screeching. "Did we just win?" he asked in surprise.

" _You_ just won," corrected Oliver, landing in a flurry of sand and delight with the Chasers not far behind. "See, I  _told_ you you're not horrible when you put your mind to it!"

"Huh," said Percy, still staring at the Snitch.

For the first time in his life, he really felt like a  _Weasley._


	16. The Noble & Most Ancient, Etcetera

Study time.

Neville was paraphrasing his notes, because it had been his turn to take notes in History of Magic the previous week while everyone else did other work. It turned out that they all did much better in the class if they took turns staying awake and then shared their notes, because then  _at least one_ person was paying attention and could explain in sensible words. " - And then a bunch of the Malfoys and all of the Dirwents died," Neville was saying, "and there was this huge kerfuffle because Gringotts is in charge of arbitrating Great House disputes and the goblins wouldn't do it because of the war - "

"Wait, wait, wait, stop," interrupted Dean, "what on Earth is a Great House?"

"Um," said Neville, caught off-guard. It had never occurred to him that Muggles  _didn't_ have a political system in which noble families wielded a substantial portion of political power. "A Noble House - we usually call them the Great Houses, there are seven - is ... a House, a wizarding family I mean, that has a hereditary Lord?" he offered after a moment, because that was the obvious identifying characteristic.

Ron added helpfully, "Usually they're old pureblood families with lots of money, like the Malfoys, and they get Wizengamot votes."

It was Parvati who thought of the obvious question. "How does a family  _become_ a Great House?" she inquired. "I mean, if this has been a thing since the twelfth century goblin wars, obviously they must have changed at some point, like, there's no way seven specific families could manage to keep having male children for that long, right? The odds are astrological."

"Astronomical," corrected Seamus, who had just written an essay about word choice for Professor Sinistra after making an inopportune comment about moon signs in her hearing.

"Sure, that," said Parvati absently. (This was one of the things, the others had noticed, which was different between her and Lavender, who were often treated by many people as interchangeable. Lavender would be annoyed if corrected; Parvati was too used to Padma doing it all the time to even notice.) "Anyway there's got to be a rule about that, right?" she continued. "So how come the goblins had to do it at all?"

Neville considered that. He didn't have it in his notes, but he was somewhat naturally equipped to handle this question, since he himself was a member of a so-called Noble House. "Well," he said, "I think there are a bunch of normal inheritance rules, like, if they don't have a male heir it just goes to the nearest female heir, which is how the names change sometimes. Like for example I think the House of Greengrass used to have a different name until all the male heirs died, and then the title went to a married witch whose husband's name was Greengrass?"

"Okay, but what if they  _all_ die?" pointed out Seamus.

"Well, that's the point, I think," said Neville. "Binns didn't actually say what happened exactly with the Dirwents, but there wasn't an heir at all and so I think  _that's_  when Gringotts is supposed to step in and ennoble a new Great House. They've got a bunch of standard rules, too, though, so usually you can guess who they're going to pick, my Gran said." He thought about this for a moment, tapping his quill absently against his notes. Neville had gotten much more comfortable answering questions ever since he'd noticed that he could answer them  _correctly_ if he spent enough time learning all the answers, like Hermione had. "Like, I think if one person is responsible for the extinction of a House, whoever kills that person gets to be the new one, outside the normal rules? But the standard otherwise is that whoever's got the most money in Gringotts gets it, because, you know, goblins."

"Well that's horribly unfair," grumbled Ron.

"I completely agree," said Neville, as Dean and Seamus nodded mutinously. "That's how they've been doing it since forever, though, and I kind of suspect that it might be one of the reasons we keep having wars with goblins. Actually, I think it might happen again pretty soon?" He pulled out a fresh piece of paper, and wrote in block capitals the names of the seven Noble Houses, and stared at it, frowning.

**BLACK /** **BONES /** **GREENGRASS /** **LONGBOTTOM /** **MALFOY /** **POTTER /** **SMITH**

Then he pointed. "These are the seven Great Houses right now," he explained. This was the sort of thing that had been impressed upon him as a child, frequently enough and with enough force that unlike most of the things his grandmother had tried to teach him, much of it had sunk in. "Most of the Blacks are either dead or in Azkaban, and their Head of House is pretty old. Susan Bones - she's in our Herbology class - is the only Bones left except for her great-aunt who isn't married, so even if Susan has kids the name'll change. There's a Lord Greengrass right now but he's only got daughters, so their name is probably changing soon or outright disappearing, especially since a lot of the time daughters of Great Houses marry people from other Great Houses - like I'd bet you a lot of money at least one of them marries Malfoy - and if they both do that, you still end up one House short if Lord Greengrass dies without having a son." And then there was something complicated about Wizengamot votes which frankly Neville did not understand at all and would not try to explain, but which had some interaction with the way Lord Malfoy had way more political power than anyone should ever be allowed to have. He continued, "I'm the only Longbottom except for my great-uncle, my Gran married into the family. And great-uncle Algie hasn't got kids, so - "

"Wait,  _you're_ a Noble House heir?" interjected Seamus in surprise.

"Um," said Neville, in some embarrassment, "yeah? That's why my Gran was so dead-set on forcing magic out of me, she was afraid I'd be a Squib and then I'd be disqualified and she'd lose her Wizengamot votes."

"You just said she married into the family," objected Lavender, looking confused.

"She's the regent or guardian or whatever," said Parvati, who was pureblood and vaguely aware of how the inheritance system worked. "Basically she gets to be in charge until Neville's of age, I think." She cocked her head as Neville nodded. "Wait, how come she's the regent and not your great-uncle?"

"Um," said Neville. "Because ... I think because she's more closely related to me?" He wasn't really sure how that rule worked, and suspected there might be a regent-candidate designation process involved, and probably a court decision, and possibly a lot of yelling. "Anyway. The Malfoys and the Smiths are still extant though - I think Zacharias might also be in our Herbology class, actually, isn't he?"

Seamus groaned audibly as Lavender and Parvati both nodded. " _Don't_ ask him about his family," he said, "he'll talk for _ever_  about how he's descended from Helga Hufflepuff, the git."

"Are any of the other Noble Houses descended from Hogwarts founders?" asked Dean curiously.

"The historical consensus is 'yeah probably'," said Neville, shrugging, "because there's a bunch of really old records that suggest that all four Founders were part of the original Wizengamot, I think. But nobody's really sure which ones except the Smiths because they're obsessive about genealogy, and it's probably  _not_ the Blacks because I'm pretty sure there were Blacks when the Founders were alive ... Didn't that come up in History at the beginning of the year when they were talking about the Founders and how there was some giant war with a family that got wiped out and the Blacks were involved somehow?" He thought he might recall something like that.

"Yeah ... I think so?" said Lavender, who vaguely remembered Hermione chattering about it. "That's weird, what if, like, Susan Bones was descended from Godric Gryffindor and didn't know it? She's a  _Hufflepuff,_ that'd be so  _weird_... "

Neville blinked. "Wow, yeah, that would be weird. Anyway, the Malfoys are  _insanely_ good at staying above the fray for some reason. But there actually  _aren't_ any Potters any more, the last ones died defeating You-Know-Who. You-Know-Who killed them, so they technically avenged  _themselves_ , which means nobody can jump the queue that way and I think Gringotts is supposed to be announcing a new family to be ennobled? Only it's been ten years and they haven't, so I'm not sure what's up with that, actually ... " He paused, frowning. He hadn't thought about that, but it seemed like someone ought to have. It wasn't totally clear how Gringotts decided when a family was formally extinct, but there was definitely some magic involved ... had someone managed to locate a distant relative and that was why?

"That's weird," said Ron, summing up the puzzlement in Neville's brain.

"Do you think the goblins know who's descended from the Founders?" wondered Parvati.

Neville shrugged helplessly. He was still wondering about the Potters. Wizarding families  _did_ intermarry all the time, it wasn't  _totally_ implausible that somewhere sufficiently far back on the family tree for someone to have forgotten about it there was a male Potter squib that hadn't been killed (because the Potters were exactly the sort of people not to disown their Squibs) and who'd had Muggle kids and then some number of generations later a Muggleborn with a different name had shown up in that line, and since  _they_ had magic they'd technically be eligible to inherit if the main branch all died ...

For a second Neville entertained the hilarious theory that Hermione Granger was the Potter heir, and then he compared her to a picture on the mantelpiece of his parents and James Potter all wearing Auror uniforms and looking terribly pleased with themselves, and noted that there was no family resemblance whatsoever. Oh well. 

"Anyway, then the six remaining Noble Houses made a petition to the Wizengamot to make peace, and Binns said the Wizengamot actually took terms to the goblins that time instead of the other way around, so I think that's why they didn't try to institute the wand ban that time, and it didn't get passed until the next rebellion ... "


	17. Durmstrang

Hermione was still shocked that she'd gotten away with this, every time she thought about it. Headmaster Karkarov had visited her house in an impeccable Muggle suit, lied fluently to her parents, and whisked her away for the start of the spring term without so much as a single problem or hiccup. If she considered it really seriously, she began to wonder how on Earth she'd managed to get away with lying to such a clearly proficient liar. Maybe it was just because everyone assumed that twelve-year-old girls don't lie.

It also eventually occurred to Hermione to ask someone where they were. She had assumed, initially, that Durmstrang was in Germany, based on its language of instruction, but after a few weeks there she'd concluded that it wasn't this  _cold_ in Germany, even the northern parts. One of her more English-literate classmates, a boy from Iceland named Jarek, had laughed at this and told her they were in Norway, but as the school was Unplottable, no one knew where.

Hermione had asked why classes were taught in German, then. He had given her a look that said plainly  _are you stupid_  and inquired dryly, "What, expecting English?"

Hermione had given up at that point and gone back to her homework. Only much later did she realize that Jarek's abrasive personality was universal, when it was pointed out to her with some amusement that it was unusual for him to talk to anyone  _at all,_ and that he'd been trying to be friendly.

But most of the time she didn't really have any spare moments to wonder about such things; because she was  _busy_.

Durmstrang was smaller than Hogwarts, and so did not have Houses. The dormitories all surrounded one single common room (the warmest place in the castle), and the eating hall contained only one grand long table. Hermione shared her dormitory with two other third-year girls, both of whom were older and taller than her and neither of whom spoke much if any English. The first, Adriana, was dark and Romanian, and the other, Natalia, was red-haired and Russian, and they'd apparently been best friends since their first day of school. Surprisingly enough, this did not prevent them from being quite friendly to their new roommate. Living with them was not unpleasant, but very distracting; they seemed to think Hermione and her British accent were "adorable", and there was perhaps more squealing than Hermione might have liked.

Naturally, this meant she spent almost all of her time in the library, because she was trying to catch up properly to the third-year curriculum of a school she wasn't familiar with, all in a new language. Durmstrang had an entirely different set of courses to Hogwarts, as Hermione probably should have expected. Translated to English, her core classes were "Life Magic", "Battle Magic", "Brewmastery", and "History & Language", each of which had its own set of rules for behavior that she needed to learn by practice and observation.

Life Magic classes were supposed to teach every spell they would ever need in noncombat situations, which made it essentially a combination of Transfiguration and Charms classes at Hogwarts, and was very casual, with everyone practicing the assigned spell in pairs or small groups and the cheerful Swedish professor ambling around his messy classroom chattering at people in rapid, accented German. Hermione found this very stressful until her German improved to the point that she could understand most of it, and then after that Life Magic became one of her favorite classes.

Battle Magic was the other group of spells, the ones for fighting, and encompassed both the sort of things you might learn in a Hogwarts Defense Against the Dark Arts class and also the sort of things you were supposed to be defending yourself from. In Battle Magic class, there was always a professional Healer on hand in addition to the stern professor, which confused Hermione until the first time she saw a classmate mispronounce a hex and accidentally rip his partner's wand arm clear off. (Hermione had had to shut her eyes and take deep breaths for several moments before being able to resume practicing herself.) She did not like Battle Magic  _at all_ , but did her best at it anyway, because if nothing else she desperately wanted to prove that she was just as good as all these pureblood supremacists she was surrounded by.

(Except, apparently, for a boy called Viktor Krum, who was fourteen, a year ahead of her. He had seemed oddly fascinated by her from the day she arrived, perhaps because she was the only person who seemed to spend more time in the library than he did. After a very awkward introduction during which they both made liberal use of Hermione's German/English dictionary, he'd taken to sharing her study table. Once they had enough common language to converse sensibly, he'd confided to her that he thought it was silly that Durmstrang didn't take Muggleborns, and she'd smiled brilliantly at him, agreed, and thenceforth decided that they were going to be friends.)

Hermione assumed Brewmastery would be Potions, but it turned out to also include a lot of what had at Hogwarts been Herbology. This was the class during which the students explored the extensive grounds, making use of their warm fur cloaks and occasionally having absurd cold-resistance contests. On these trips outside their Professor, an excitable sparrow-Animagus, was always fluttering about talking about all the different plants, how to care for them, and what sort of potions they could be used for, flickering between witch and bird like a faulty light-bulb. (Hermione took care not to use this analogy out loud, since she suspected it would mark her for Muggle-raised.)

History & Language was primarily a history class, but it was also the only class during which the professor, an elderly wizard who appeared to be a polyglot, would speak in any language other than German. Thrice a week was Talking Day, during which all the students in a class were supposed to try to speak to each other using only whatever language was assigned that day; this was mostly to encourage the students to be able to communicate with one another. There were students whose mother tongues were German, French, Italian, and almost every Slavic and Scandinavian language there was, and although all the students had at least basic proficiency in German, it helped everyone to know how the others worked.

This explained why Hermione kept hearing the sixth- and seventh-year students having bafflingly multilingual conversations in which they would, apparently, mix languages like soup ingredients without really noticing, although it did not entirely help her - or any of the other students below fourth year, in fact - understand anything they were saying. She enjoyed Talking Days, though, difficult as they were; cultural differences were a subject she was genuinely fascinated by, and she always felt like she was learning new things. As a bonus, watching Jarek and Natalia try to have arguments in a language neither of them knew - such as Italian - was invariably hilarious.

There were also electives, which Hermione naturally signed up for every single one of: Transportation (flying brooms and carpets, later to include Portkeys and Apparition), Mathematics (Arithmancy, Ancient Runes, and quite a bit of genuine Muggle mathematics, to Hermione's surprise), Literature (which as far as she could tell had no equivalent at Hogwarts), and Astronomy (which also included some centaur-derived Divination).

Hermione was  _extraordinarily_ busy, working every spare second to make sure she wasn't missing anything and in order to quickly earn her right to be called the best student in her class -

\- but she  _did_ eat, and sleep, because Adriana would tug gently on her sleeve and remind her, or Jarek would contrive to slip sleeping powder into her tea, and Hermione decided that all the lies and the hard work and the freezing cold were worth it. She began to feel comfortable in the world of Durmstrang Institute. And so she began not to notice the faint little alarm bell ringing in the back of her head when her classmates giggled over the dismembered pieces of a bear, or when someone made an offhand joke about Muggle-hunting. She didn't  _want_  to notice, not when throwing a fit might make Natalia decide she wasn't worth her valuable time, or make Viktor stop helping her study.

She really  _liked_ having friends.


	18. Death & Statistics

Professor Vector was bored.

Consequently, she was sitting in the staffroom making graphs with McGonagall's school census data, because she'd run out of student work to grade and all of her tests had been written years ago. McGonagall had only basic data, number of students in each House for every year and their gender and blood status, but from that she had been able to pull a remarkable amount of interesting information. Professor Snape, looking mildly amused, was sitting at the staff table drinking black tea, grading essays, and intermittently making sarcastic comments. (Septima Vector had been a Slytherin, and she and the Slytherin Head of House got along reasonably well.)

"That's odd," said Vector, peering at the sketch she'd just made of the number of Muggleborns in any given incoming class graphed on the same scale as the total number of incoming students. She'd been expecting a correlation, from which she might deduce the average number of Muggleborns over a large span of time, but the two curves did not seem to vary especially dependently. She'd tried putting in vertical dotted lines for the beginning and end of the War, and after some consideration also the previous European war.

"What?" inquired Snape curiously.

"You'd figure that the number of Muggleborns as a fraction of total population would drop significantly at, give or take, an eleven year interval from when wars were going on, right?"

Snape nodded cautiously.

"Well, they don't," she said. "For one thing, Grindelwald's war doesn't appear to have affected the Muggleborn rate at  _all._ "

"I can explain that one," said McGonagall, who had been alive and an adult during that war, from the vicinity of the teakettle. "Gellert Grindelwald did  _not_ discriminate against Muggleborn witches and wizards the way You-Know-Who did. As far as he was concerned, anyone with magic was part of the superior race." She shook her head, looking a bit sad. "If you could measure the number of Squibs in the world, I think you'd find that  _they_ were the ones who were most victimized in that war, especially since unlike Muggleborns, they cannot defend themselves against magic with any effectiveness."

"Ah," said Vector, who had been too young to know this. "Okay, well, that explains that. But the war here was certainly all about blood status. And look at this." She frowned at her graphs. "In sixty-five, that's when the war started according to the history books, we had what is probably a 'normal' rate of Muggle-borns - about eighteen percent - coming into Hogwarts as first-years. The graduation rate that year was normal. About six years later, there's a sharp drop in the percentage, down to more like four percent. It decreases slowly thereafter. Around sixty-nine the  _total_ population starts to fall ... so by seventy-two it's still around the same percentage but it's only one person in thirty-five first years, Lily Evans was the  _only_ Muggleborn Sorted that year."

She ignored Snape's involuntary eye-twitch at the name. She'd been three years behind him in school, and like most people who'd observed the falling-out between Lily and Severus at the time, had decided at the time that she really just didn't want to know.

"And then," Vector continues, "the student population steadily decreases, and it's hard to get a statistically significant average percent because there was still about one Muggleborn per year, until eighty-five, that's about six years after the war ended. The total population of wizardborn stayed at about the same rate but there was a really abrupt jump in Muggleborn population, which brought up the percentage really sharply, close to about fifty percent - that's six years ago and you'll notice that well over half of our upper-year students, except the Slytherins, are Muggleborn."

McGonagall nodded; she had noticed that. Gryffindor was extremely underpopulated as of late, thanks to the number of Gryffindor families who'd been murdered during the war ( _James Lily Frank Alice Peter Marlene)_ , but it was still noticeable: of her six seventh-years,  _five_ were Muggleborn.

Vector frowned at her notes. "And then the percentage decreases slowly from there. But that doesn't make sense. Shouldn't that have happened  _eleven_ years after the end of the war? We're only starting to see the population uptick now, the first-years this year were a year or two old when the war ended." The endpoints were Hermione Granger (who would have been twenty-five months old when the Potters killed Voldemort) and Neville Longbottom (who would have been about fifteen months). So ... "Kids born  _after_ the war ended would be the ones born starting in November of 1981, those kids will be eleven  _next_ November, we won't see them until the year after next. So why the Muggleborns? Shouldn't that be the case everywhere?"

Snape shook his head slowly. "No, I see it," he said. "Unlike Squibs, Muggleborns are  _non-obvious_ until they start showing accidental magic. That's around five or six, I think, isn't it, Minerva?"

McGonagall considered, and then nodded. "Yes, I believe so."

The Potions master spoke clinically; only those who knew him  _very_ well would have noticed that he was faintly uncomfortable talking about the massacre of children. "The Death Eaters would not have killed any Muggleborns younger than five, then," he said, "and so it is  _those_ children you saw begin to arrive six years ago, the ones who were alive at the end of the war but too young to be noticed."

"Ah," said Professor Vector, still frowning at her graphs. "And since  _their_ parents were only random Muggles, they were not as statistically likely to be killed just for having parents who disagreed with the Death Eaters than any given wizarding family."

Snape nodded. "And  _wizarding_ children would not be left alive for being younger than five," he said grimly, "which is why you didn't see the wizarding population go up again until now."

"Ah," said Vector again, looking uncomfortable. Then she said, stacking up the papers and setting them definitively to the side, "I think I am going to graph something that  _doesn't_  make me think about my former classmates murdering children."

"Excellent choice," said Snape wryly, and went back to his grading, satisfied in the reminder that not  _all_ Slytherins were like the Death Eaters.


	19. Norbert

The first-year Gryffindors had laid claim to a corner table in the library, which was far enough out of the way that they hadn't been kicked out of it by older students because no one else wanted it. It was surrounded by empty tables and dusty shelves, and far enough from Madam Pince's desk that they wouldn't be yelled at for talking, but had taken them some time to find and get into the habit of sitting at, because this was Hogwarts, and it was entirely possible to actually get  _lost_ in the library between the entrance and this far back.

(They still hadn't figured out how to get from their table to the Restricted Section, and Seamus had at one point suggested that maybe you simply couldn't find the Restricted Section at all unless you had a signed note that said you could go there. Ron had pointed out that he was fairly certain Fred and George snuck back there all the time without notes, but as the twins did not make a habit of sharing their methods, he had no idea  _how_  they got into the Restricted Section and no illusions that they would tell him where to find it.)

It was to this table that Parvati returned, carrying a book on minor magical pests that they needed for Quirrell's assigned essay, which was due soon. They had been practicing simple jinxes all year (Lavender had even hit Malfoy with one in the corridor while the blond Slytherin was taking aim at Neville, and ducked his rejoinder rather adroitly, to general applause), and were supposed to be writing about the 'appropriate' uses of these spells. Since everyone had just been using them to annoy their House rivals, they had been obliged to consult the library on what you were  _actually_ supposed to use Jelly-legs and Leg-locker Jinxes for.

Parvati sat down with the book, however, and did not open it. Instead she said, her eyes wide with curiosity, "I just saw  _Hagrid!_ "

Since they all had been in the library nearly every day since the start of term, it was immediately clear to everyone why this was news. Rubeus Hagrid, the gamekeeper, simply  _didn't_ go to the library; they'd never seen him, and given his size, it would have been extremely obvious if he had been there. Lavender said, confused, "What's he doing here?"

"Dunno for sure," said Parvati, leaning forward as if to share a secret, "but he was looking at books about  _dragons!_ " And, she further explained, not the sort of books you would want if you were planning on trying to get  _rid_ of dragons, or  _protect_ yourself from dragons; they were the sort of old books that nobody published anymore, about what you would do if you wanted to  _raise_ a dragon, like as a  _pet_.

"Who would want a  _dragon_ for a pet?" said Seamus, sounding a little horrified.

Ron and Neville exchanged faintly worried glances and said, almost at the exact same time, "Hagrid would."

* * *

Perhaps predictably, it was Ron and Neville who were elected to go find out what Hagrid was doing and, if it were illegal, stop him from doing it. As both their parents, and Ron's second-eldest brother, had been good friends of Hagrid's, they occasionally went down to the gamekeepers' hut for tea and tooth-breaking biscuits and interesting stories about their parents' childhoods. Since none of the other first-years did this on a regular basis, Ron and Neville were the ones who got to ask Hagrid awkward questions.

It was spring, and warm, and Neville's expression got steadily more nervous as they approached the hut and saw that there was smoke spiraling out of the chimney, and all of the blind were shut. "Surely," he said, swallowing, " _surely_ he hasn't  _actually_ got - "

* * *

"Hagrid, you live in a  _wooden house_ \- "

* * *

> _Dear Charlie,_
> 
> _We've just found out that Hagrid's got a baby dragon, and he hasn't got a permit or anything, he just bought the egg off some bloke in a pub. And we figured he could probably handle it at first ... But we think Draco Malfoy found out, and we really don't want Hagrid to get arrested, and is there anything you can do to help? It's about a week old now and he's named it Norbert and I don't know how old dragons have to get before they start breathing fire but Hagrid's hut is really flammable and we're worried ..._
> 
> _Ron_

* * *

> _Dear Ron_ ,
> 
> _Tell Hagrid he absolutely needs to get rid of the hatchling before he's reported to the Ministry! Lucius Malfoy could get him sent to Azkaban in a heartbeat. We can handle it here, that's probably the best plan, the reserve's actually got a pretty stable system for faking registration for dragons rescued from illegal breeders, that sort of thing happens all the time. Not my department, but I can send down a couple of my friends who're familiar with the area. I've put it on the schedule as early as we could fit it in; get Norbert to the top of the Astronomy tower at midnight a week from Sunday and they'll pick him up._
> 
> _And apologize to Hagrid for me, I know he's always wanted a dragon, but that's really just insurmountably dangerous. Tell him to write me if he wants to come visit, we can arrange that with enough warning._
> 
> _Charlie_

* * *

Ron was sitting at the breakfast table when he read this, and had the amazingly awkward timing to be within reach of Percy.

"Writing to Charlie?" his brother inquired curiously, recognizing the owl that had delivered the message to be their dragon-taming brother's Great Gray, Alric. "What for?"

Ron said, "Um, no reason," and quickly stuffed the letter out of sight. The look of disappointment that flashed across Percy's face, however, made Ron feel as if he'd just stabbed his brother with a carving knife.  _Oh_ , it said,  _you don't really want me in your life, do you, you just want me to help you with your homework. Ouch, little brother, that hurts._ Ron, who had only a few months ago resolved  _not_ to do that sort of thing, added hastily and with not a little guilt in his voice, "I'll tell you later, okay?"

He kept his word; later that evening, he told Percy all about Hagrid's dragon egg, about Norbert, and about the resulting dilemma. He and Neville, even with help from the others, had not been able to figure out how to get to the top of the Astronomy tower at midnight on a Sunday without getting caught by Filch halfway and getting in amazingly huge amounts of trouble, especially given the constraint that they were going to need to do it while transporting a crate approximately the size and weight of Neville.

Percy stared at him for an entire minute.

Then he smiled, and said, "Did you know that prefects are allowed out past curfew?"

* * *

Ron learned the hard way that Norbert's bite was poisonous. Afraid of getting Hagrid in trouble, he wrapped his hand in a handkerchief and tried to pretend that nothing was wrong, but eventually that became untenable. The stubborn redhead had to be dragged to the hospital wing by a faintly exasperated Parvati, after his hand swelled to more than twice its normal size and turned a nasty shade of greenish purple.

Percy told the others in no uncertain terms that they were absolutely not to involve themselves in the transportation of Norbert. "This is  _not_ a Gryffindor adventure," he said flatly to the five first-years gathered around Ron's hospital bed the evening of May 9th, the day before Charlie's friends were scheduled to arrive. His voice was stern, and nearly reminiscent of McGonagall.

"But - " began Lavender.  _We're Gryffindors, aren't we?_

"Gryffindor adventures get people hurt," said Percy flatly, and everyone - thinking of Halloween - winced. "There is to be no heroic rule-breaking, no last-minute emergencies that you must handle. If anything goes wrong, it is  _not_ your job to fix it." He gave an especially pointed look here to Ron, with whom he was still somewhat annoyed for getting himself bitten by the dragon he wasn't even supposed to be dealing with. Percy said, making clear eye contact with every single one of the kids, "You  _will not_ leave the Tower even if you hear from some older student that there is a dragon loose on the grounds, or that Hagrid's hut is on fire, or any other absurd problem that I cannot currently think of. If anything happens,  _I_ will handle it, because I am not breaking any rules." This was technically true; Percy was not actually going to break any Hogwarts rules.

(It tells you a lot about what Percy had learned from his older brothers that, while he would have rejected out of hand any plan that involved breaking school rules, it had not fazed him at all that he was going to be breaking several  _laws_.)

He added, "and if one of you gets yourself in trouble by behaving like a stupid bloody Gryffindor, as soon as I get back, I will hang you from the top of the Great Hall by your shoelaces,  _is that clear?_ "

Six terrified nods told him that it was.

* * *

Given more than a week's warning, Percy had been able to get himself scheduled for prefect patrol duty on the night Charlie's friends were due to arrive.

At ten-thirty on the evening of May 10th, Percy Weasley walked casually out onto the grounds and to the gamekeeper's wooden hut, with his prefect's badge pinned carefully to his robes and wearing no cloak. He had heard far too many of Charlie's stories about cloaks getting set on fire, or caught in talons, or tripped over, to wear one in the presence of a dragon, even a very small dragon ... although, admittedly, the fact that the twins had recently charmed his cloak to play music whenever caught by the wind, a jinx he'd yet to get around to figuring out how to reverse, had probably influenced his decision as well.

Knock-knock-knock.

The door opened slightly, and Hagrid peered out suspiciously. When he saw who it was, he opened the door properly, and ushered Percy in. Percy could see that the enormous man was upset; he kept dabbing at his red eyes with a handkerchief the size of a tablecloth, and making half-hearted attempts to stall as he wrestled Norbert into a crate. Percy kept an eye on his watch and an eye on the door, and waited, wishing he had any idea how to be usefully sympathetic.

Once Norbert - now the size of a dog - had been packed into the crate with blankets and pillows and a teddy bear he had immediately shredded, Percy gave Hagrid five more minutes to be sentimental (" _'E's gonna miss his mummy!"_ ) and then, glancing regretfully at his watch, said, "It's a quarter after eleven, Hagrid, I've got to get him up to the tower now." Hagrid nodded tearfully, waving at the little dragon through the slats of the crate, and Percy wished yet again that he had any idea how to make sad people feel better. " _Locomotor Norbert!_ " he said, pointing his wand at the crate, and it lifted gently into the air.

Halfway back to the front door, the growling and tearing sound of Norbert disassembling his pillows motivated Percy to add a Silencing charm, which made it easier not to think about the fact that he was carrying a very illegal baby dragon. Still, it was a nerve-wracking climb up the front steps, up the marble staircase, around the west wing, and up the steps of the Astronomy Tower.

Thankfully, he made it to the top without incident; simply flashing his Prefect badge at Mrs. Norris made her scamper away with a disappointed hiss, and he did not see Filch. (Though he  _did_ have an explanation prepared for the eventuality: He was delivering telescopes to Professor Sinistra, and could probably back up that assertion by reaching into the crate and Transfiguring a pillow into a telescope to show the caretaker. It was for this reason that he was wearing his dragonhide gloves.)

At a quarter to midnight he shut the trapdoor to the open-air top of the Astronomy Tower, and took a deep breath of the cool night air, feeling vaguely surprised that nothing horrible had happened yet.

Charlie's friends turned up precisely at midnight on broomsticks, dressed all in battered black leather and looking vaguely familiar. They inexplicably managed to land on the tower, all in a flurry of air and loose hanging straps and ruffled hair, without making a single noise, but then immediately ruined the effect by greeting Percy with cheery disregard for the lateness of the hour. "Mornin', li'l Ginger," trilled their leader, a shaggy brown-haired wizard with a friendly Scottish accent who was several inches shorter than Percy and seemed to thrum with energy. One of the others gave him a sardonic look. "Or, eh, evenin', I guess, whichever," he added with a shrug.

"Er, yes," said Percy, who had skittered several steps back to let the half-dozen broomsticks land, "hello. You're here for, ah, Norbert?" He indicated the crate, which was shaking slightly now that it had been let down to the ground again.

Several people nodded brightly and got to work, and it became obvious that the various loose buckled straps hanging from various broomsticks were in fact the pieces of a harnessing rig. They'd come prepared. "Thanks for the box," said a dark Spanish wizard appreciatively, "we came prepared for a loose dragon, but this is way easier."

"You're welcome," said Percy automatically, and then when someone asked what breed of dragon they had in the aforementioned box, he had to think. "I didn't get a good look at it," he admitted, "not in any kind of light. I think Ron said it was a Norwegian Ridgeback."

The Scottish wizard whistled. "Damn rare, these buggers. Where'd ya get hold of him?"

"I didn't," said Percy quickly, "I'm just the messenger."

This answer was accepted with a shrug, and soon Norbert was vanishing into the clouds, his crate strapped firmly to the dragon keepers' broomsticks. Once he had vanished from sight, Percy let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding. The dragon was gone; everything was fine.

He paced the halls for another hour, until the end of his shift, during which time he mostly gently straightened portraits, as no one seemed to be awake. That was nice; sometimes he had to chase people out of broom closets, which was never fun for anyone involved.

He reported to Professor Sinistra, who was sitting in her office grading essays, that his patrol shift had been uneventful, and then headed back down the steps.

To his disappointment, this was not quitethe end of the excitement for the day.

* * *

Halfway across the first floor, heading for the staircase, Percy ran into Professor McGonagall, who was dragging Draco Malfoy by the ear. "Oh," he said in complete surprise, his voice squeaking slightly with nerves, "hello, Professor." McGonagall wasn't usually awake at this hour; night patrol duty fell to the prefects, and they reported to Sinistra rather than to their Heads of House, since the Astronomy professor was always up at night. Usually no one woke up any of the other professors unless something came up that required further authority.

"Mr. Weasley," said the Gryffindor Head of House, looking faintly surprised.

"See!" squealed Malfoy, "see, he  _is_ up past curfew - "

"I am a  _prefect_ , unlike you, Mr. Malfoy," said Percy rather sharply, eyes narrowing. "Professor, did he wake you up?"

McGonagall nodded. "Mr. Malfoy  _insists_ ," she said with a sigh, "that there is, and I quote, a  _Weasley conspiracy_ to smuggle a  _dragon_ out of the school tonight." She shot the Slytherin a disapproving look. "I was just returning him to his common room. How was your patrol?"

"Pleasantly uneventful, Professor," said Percy as sincerely as possible. He was enormously glad for the fact that his gloves were now safely in his robe pockets. "I certainly haven't seen any dragons."

"But I  _saw_ \- " began Malfoy unhappily.

A great deal of Percy's attention was focused on doing his level best to look as incredulous as possible at the idea that he and any of his brothers might be conspiring to transport a dragon out of the school, but this still managed to annoy him. "With all due respect, Mr. Malfoy," he said frostily, "this is  _Hogwarts_. If you saw a poltergeist pretending to be a dragon, I don't believe that gives you the right to be out past curfew." Malfoy subsided, seething, and Percy addressed McGonagall politely. "My patrol's over. Can I do anything for you before I go to bed, Professor?"

"I can handle this, thank you, Mr. Weasley," said McGonagall, and Percy nodded and headed up the steps, trying not to betray his relief.

When he returned to the common room, he found that Neville Longbottom was waiting up for him, looking sleepy and nervous. He jumped to his feet the second he saw Percy, and said a stream of mostly-incoherent words, the relevant bits of which were "Malfoy" and "reporting to McGonagall" and "huge trouble", and Percy sighed and patted the kid on the shoulder, pushing him gently towards the staircase to the dorms.

"Everything is fine, Neville," he said. And then he added, pointedly, "but everything would  _not_ be fine if you had left the Tower to try to warn me, because McGonagall would have caught you instead of just catching Malfoy, and then the both of you would be in trouble." He smiled a little at the understanding that bloomed across Neville's nervous face then. "See? That is why I told you all to stay put," he explained. "Sometimes problems are much better solved with  _sense_ than with Gryffindoring." And off Neville went up the stairs, and Percy headed to his own bed, yawning, and feeling as if he'd actually managed to teach a valuable lesson.

(Percy was faintly surprised to notice that he really  _liked_ that feeling.)


	20. This Is A Horrible Idea

In a corner of the Gryffindor common room, the Weasley twins sat huddled together over several pieces of parchment, quills in hand. They kept writing over each other, somehow not so much as knocking elbows in the process. Lee Jordan, from where he was sitting several tables away playing Exploding Snap with Angelina Johnson and Alicia Spinnet, kept casting them faintly concerned looks. If Percy had known what his brothers were doing, he would have shouted at them until their ears shriveled away to nothingness; but one of the things that they had learned from the Marauders and their inimitable Map was how to make things on parchment look entirely different from what they were. To Percy, it just looked like they were finally doing their homework; and so he left them alone.

It should, perhaps, go without saying that they were not doing their homework at all.

They were trying to figure out, as the top of the page indicated in block capitals,  **WHAT THE BLOODY HELL IS UP WITH QUIRRELL?** , and were in the process of writing down everything they had so far in hopes that putting it all down together would help them think of an explanation.

> _observations_   
>  _\- Quirrell is the one who yelled about the troll on Halloween;; it was decidedly NOT in the dungeons_   
>  _\- Defense professor who can't fight trolls?_   
>  _\- Quirrell and Snape were both in the forbidden third floor corridor while Percy was troll-fighting (according to Map)_   
>  _\- Snape was limping for weeks after Halloween;_   
>  _\- Snape and Quirrell DEFINITELY DO NOT GET ALONG_   
>  _\- Quirinus Quirrell = Tom Riddle on the Map (twice now)_   
>  _\- Tom Riddle was a Slytherin prefect, and Head Boy in 1943 (got an Award for Special Services to the School;; NO IDEA WHAT FOR)_   
>  _\- Percy says Quirrell didn't used to stutter back when he taught Muggle Studies two years ago (everybody says vampires?)_   
>  _\- sabbatical supposedly to Albania (there aren't actually vampires in Albania)_   
>  _\- Ron says he saw a "monster" killing unicorns (shot by Hagrid), same day as first Map thing_   
>  _\- Quirrell was "ill" the next day, Snape covered his classes, but he wasn't in the hospital wing, he was in his office_   
>  _\- Hagrid says the centaurs didn't find the monster he shot_   
>  _\- Quirrell never takes off that turban (full of garlic / full of something else covered by garlic?)_
> 
> _conclusions_   
>  _\- Quirrell is not really Quirrell, he's this Tom Riddle guy pretending (but why?) (so is real Quirrell dead?)_   
>  _\- Quirrell/Riddle tried to kill Ron (and Malfoy?)_   
>  _\- Quirrell/Riddle is drinking unicorn blood (keeps you alive, supposed to be cursed)_   
>  _\- Quirrell/Riddle/Snape/both are trying to break into the forbidden third floor for whatever's past that dog_   
>  _\- there was a fight on Halloween_
> 
> _theories_   
>  _\- Quirrell/Riddle is a vampire? (anti-vampire? he's clearly not affected by the garlic)_   
>  _\- Quirrell/Riddle is dead or dying_   
>  _\- Snape summoned the troll and Quirrell tried to get other people involved 'cause he sucks at fighting trolls?_   
>  _\- there's something in the third floor better than unicorn blood_   
>  _-Q/R has a grudge against Malfoy for some reason? maybe related to not getting along with Snape?_   
>  _\- Snape is trying to get at it? he knows how to make the relevant potion, maybe?_   
>  _\- why aren't they working together if they have the same goal?_   
>  _\- is there only one dose? what would Snape want with it anyway? (is Snape dying too?)_   
>  _\- ARE they working together (Snape covering classes, both on third floor Halloween ... ) and just faking?_
> 
> _to do:_   
>  _\- look up vampire-like things that aren't vampires_   
>  _\- what EXACTLY does unicorn blood do?_   
>  _\- what else could reproduce that effect?_   
>  _\- ASK MCGONAGALL ABOUT SNAPE & THE THIRD FLOOR_

Percy continued not to notice what they were up to, as the days passed. They made a point of intermittently really doing their homework, so that it wouldn't seem bizarre that they were spending so much time in the library recently. McGonagall actually looked vaguely approving when they came to talk to her, saying, "I am very pleased that you have been doing your work more consistently as of late," which was quite nice, for all that it vanished at once as soon as they asked her their question. Then at once the usual stern look was back, and along with it their Head of House's disapproval in full force. "Professor Snape is a respected member of our faculty, as is Professor Quirrell," she said sharply, "and I will not hear such baseless accusations from my students. At any rate, the third-floor corridor is perfectly well-protected, and for that matter none of your business!"

> _observations:_
> 
> _\- McGonagall dismissed us HARD, probably no one will listen to us because we're us_   
>  _\- she did use the word "protected" which means there IS something to protect, the dog's a guardian_   
>  _\- vampires don't drink unicorn blood, they'd get sick and probably die, so he's not a vampire_   
>  _\- otherwise it's basically anti-death magic but cursed (you'd have to be really evil!)_   
>  _\- general non-cursed anti-death magic: nothing came up but the Philosopher's Stone, of which there's only one_
> 
> _conclusions:_
> 
> _?_
> 
> _to do:_   
>  _\- see if there's more unicorns dying_

It occurred to them later (much, much later) that the sensible thing to do would have just been to go ask Hagrid; but they were Fred and George Weasley. That is not what they did.

What they did was sneak out of the castle on Thursday night, the day before the Quidditch game, and go into the Forbidden Forest.


	21. Spiders Are Scary

The idea, of course, was to try and find out if the unicorns were still being hunted, and if so, by what. Whatever Quirrell (Riddle?) was, he'd taken one of Hagrid's crossbow bolts to the chest and lived (?) to tell the tale, but unless they could catch him red-handed, none of the other professors were likely to believe them. If Snape was working with Quirrell, he'd no doubt lie and get them in trouble, and if Snape  _wasn't_ working with Quirrell, he probably still wouldn't be any help, because this was Snape they were talking about. Which meant it was, in a  _best_ case scenario, their word against one of their professors, and somehow the twins sincerely doubted that that was a conversation with the Headmaster that would go anything resembling well.

So they needed proof.

Therefore they needed to find the unicorns, or some evidence of what had happened to them, in order to form a coherent accusation that they could take to Dumbledore. Right now all they had was "probably Quirrell is evil?" and despite all the circumstantial evidence they had, they still weren't sure what evil thing he was even  _doing_. Killing unicorns, however, counted as evil all by itself, so that would be a good place to start, in theory.

The flaw in the plan, of course, was that the forest was rather  _large_.

They had been wandering through the forest for about an hour, absently wondering whether Percy would even be able to contain the amount of annoyance required to respond properly to this level of irresponsibility or if he would just explode, when the faint sound of clicking made both the twins freeze in place. They'd eschewed lights in hopes that letting their eyes adjust would allow them to see better, but it was unfortunately quite a bit darker than they'd expected, and although they  _had_ adjusted they still couldn't actually see very well. All either could see were great black masses shifting in the trees, which they had previously assumed were the trees moving. It was beginning to be obvious, however, that there was something  _in_  the trees. Something very large, and something that was probably  _not_ a unicorn.

 _Something_ dropped into the path in front of them. Eight feet of black hairy something, to be specific, clicking ominously.

Fred said, " _Lumos!_ ", giving George light by which to aim. George obliged with " _Tarantallegra!_ " and hit a giant spider right in the middle of its eight eyes. It did not even flinch. By the light of Fred's wand, they saw clearly that they were surrounded by enormous spiders, black and hairy and fanged, and evidently rather resistant to jinxes. They were thirteen and did not know any more dangerous magic than jinxes, which meant that they were not well-equipped to defend themselves with any effectiveness from this hazard.

It was at this point, finally, that they realized how amazingly stupid they were being.

(Then they ran for their lives.)

* * *

Ron and Neville were going over their Charms homework, ostensibly with Percy's help. More accurately, what was happening was that they asked questions mostly to each other, and Percy intermittently interrupted his ongoing panic attack to answer them. Neville had asked at one point, quietly, if they shouldn't maybe leave Percy alone, and Ron had grinned and said, equally quietly, "I think it calms him down, actually," which was completely true, if non-obvious to non-Weasleys. Neville certainly hadn't noticed any appreciable difference in the level of tension that Percy (twitchy and surrounded by parchment) radiated, but he supposed Ron probably knew best.

Even Percy looked up and inhaled sharply, however, when Fred and George tumbled through the portrait hole and sort of half-ran, half-stumbled over to Ron.

"We are - "

" - so sorry - "

" - about the spider - "

" - when you were five - "

" - that was awful - "

" -  _so sorry_ \- "

" - never again - "

" - never ever - "

" - spiders are  _scary!_ "

After this torrent of words, the twins bolted up the stairs to their dormitory, and the sound of a door slamming could be heard in the distance. Ron stared at the stairs, looking confused and slightly alarmed.

"That was weird," observed Neville.

Percy, his expression faintly puzzled, agreed, "I feel the distinct sense that I should be yelling at them for something."

"Well,  _that's_  normal, at least," said Ron.

* * *

The next day at breakfast the twins gave Ron a giant bar of Honeydukes' finest chocolate and apologized several more times, before they ran off again, without pausing to actually eat any breakfast or even sit down at the table. Dean tilted his head at Ron as the redhead blinked at the belated gift in his hand, which was quite possibly the first thing the twins had ever given him without condition, ever. "What, did they kill your rat or something?" Dean asked.

"Er ... no," said Ron, patting the pocket where Scabbers was slumbering peacefully, quite unharmed. He considered, and tried to recall the flurry of apologetic words from the previous evening. After a moment he offered, "Apparently it's got something to do with the fact that they turned my teddy bear into a giant spider when I was five?" Everyone winced at the mental image. Ron snapped a section off the chocolate bar and shrugged dismissively. "If I get free candy out of the deal," he said, taking a bite, "I am not going to ask questions."

"Fair enough," said Dean amiably, "can I have a piece?"

* * *

It took the twins several days to regain anything resembling an ordinary level of calmness, after which time they managed to have a basically coherent discussion about what had happened. Clearly they should not have gone into the forest so inadequately prepared. No wonder it was Forbidden to students with a capital F. So, they maybe needed a different approach to the problem ...

... also, they were never, ever going to make fun of anyone for being afraid of spiders  _ever again_.


	22. Plot-Induced Sleep Deprivation

The twins spent most of Friday evening in brightly-lit Honeydukes, trying to dispel their lingering fear from their jaunt into the Forest the previous night. They returned rather late to find the common room quite sparsely occupied, though not entirely empty. Even the NEWT students had left. Amelia Fawcett, the only one of the six who wasn't Muggleborn, didn't have any idea how to do anything nonmagical, and as such expected not to be able to function in real life without decent NEWT scores; she had been panicking for weeks, but her classmates had eventually dragged her upstairs and made her go to sleep. There were, after all, two entire days until the exams started. Two people were still awake, however: Percy Weasley and Oliver Wood, firmly ensconced in a corner table studying.

"What're you two doing still up?" said Fred curiously as he spotted them. They had books open and parchment everywhere, and clearly hadn't moved for hours.

Percy looked up, and blinked a few times to focus on his brothers. "Neither of us can sleep because Oliver keeps pacing around muttering to himself," he explained. "So I figured we might as well do something productive. What are  _you_ doing up?" He considered the twins curiously, and then added, "are you  _okay_? You seemed ... " How to describe the twins' odd behavior that morning and the previous evening? " ... stressed, earlier."

There was a distinct pause.

Percy recognized the look that passed between Fred and George. It was  _identical_ to the expression Ron had been wearing earlier that year, when he decided not to tell Percy about Norbert, and then changed his mind. So he waited politely, and tried not to look forbidding, and sure enough, a moment later the twins joined them at the table. Without preamble, George said, "Professor Quirrell's dead or dying and eating unicorns to stay alive, and we think there's something hidden on the forbidden third floor that he wants and is willing to break into Gringotts and possibly kill people to get."

There was another, slightly longer pause.

Oliver said, " _What_?", and Percy said, as calmly as possible, "You're going to need to explain that."

So Fred pulled out his charmed parchment with all their observations and conclusions and questions, and handed it to his brother. At the bottom, ' _find out if more unicorns are dying_ ' had been scratched out and under it written, ' _SPIDERS ARE SCARY!_ ', which was not especially illuminating.

Percy read the entire page, paled several shades, and then spun it around for Oliver to read. As he could read (albeit slowly) upside-down, he could still point at relevant things on the page as he spoke. This he did, as he said, "First question: What dog?"

The twins answered in their usual fragmented fashion, taking turns every half a sentence without even pausing in between, like tossing a conversational Quaffle back and forth. Percy had always wondered if they even knew they were doing it. "Well, see, we thought Dumbledore was kidding" - "when he said that stuff at the feast" - "about dying a horrible death and so on" - "so we went to go find out what's on the third floor" - "in the middle of the night of course" - "and it's not even warded" - "just a  _colloportus,_ that was it" - "got through it easy" - "there's a trapdoor" - "with a big three-headed dog standing on it."

There was a pause for Percy to absorb this, and then his voice rose about an octave as he said, " _There's a Cerberus inside Hogwarts?_ "

"A what?" said Fred, George, and Oliver all at once.

"Cerberus, three-headed dog," said Percy distractedly, "they're guard dogs, it's a big export from Greece, they're really hard to get hold of,  _what in the name of all and good and holy is it doing in a school?_ "

The twins exchanged a look. "You just said it yourself" - "guarding something."

Percy looked back at the paper. "And you think this something is a Philosopher's Stone," he observed. "If it even existed there's no reason for it to be  _here_ , though - "

"Why shouldn't it exist?" said Oliver. "You just told me three-headed dogs are real." He had not been previously aware of this, due to his choice in electives failing to include Care of Magical Creatures. He'd picked Divination and Ancient Runes on the guess that neither was likely to be dangerous. (Charlie Weasley had once been an hour late for Quidditch practice due to having his hand shattered in Care of Magical Creatures class, and this had rather soured Oliver on the subject.) "Dragons are real, unicorns are real, ghosts are real, flying broomsticks are real, elves are real, universal antitoxins are real - "

"Huh?" said Fred, and Percy supplied entirely without thinking about it, "Bezoars," and George said, "Oh."

" - basically everything my parents ever told me was imaginary as a child is real," finished Oliver, who was Muggle-born. "Why  _shouldn't_ the Philosopher's Stone be real, too?"

"Santa Claus isn't real," said Percy, who had taken Muggle Studies. (And Arithmancy and Care of Magical Creatures and Ancient Runes; thankfully, due to the small size of his class year, none of them had overlapped.) He ignored the look of mild disappointment on Oliver's face and continued, "and it's just ridiculous, one thing that makes you rich  _and_ immortal, it's  _clearly_ wishful thinking. And besides, there's things magic can't do; immortality is definitely one of them - "

"Hold that thought," said Fred. The twins had just, as one motion, got up from the table. George added, "We'll be back." And then, before Percy could resume his rant or ask where they were going, they were out through the portrait hole.

"We should really just lock that after curfew," said Percy idly, and went back to his Transfiguration book. Once he'd become a prefect he'd tried a number of times to chase down his brothers when they left the common room past curfew, and it had always failed. He always ended up lost and nowhere near them. Eventually, he'd given it up as a lost cause, and at this point didn't even consider it worth the time to bother trying.

The twins returned a while later, with a book. When it was set on the table, Percy could see that it was entitled  _Alchemists of Great Britain,_ and he recognized it as one of a set of books by the same historian which catalogued all of the significant figures of wizarding Britain from the beginning of recorded history.  _Alchemists_ was one of the ones he hadn't read, although he had on occasion skimmed  _Arithmancers_ and  _Political Leaders,_ respectively for class and out of personal curiosity.

In short order George had flipped to the F's and handed Percy the book, pointing at the relevant entry. Sighing, Percy looked down and read.

_Nicolas Flamel (1326 - present)_

_Only known maker of the fabled Philosopher's Stone, which turns lead into gold and produces the Elixir of Life. Has published a total of 548 separate papers on alchemical research topics, the most recent of which is a collaboration 'On the Uses of Dragons' Blood' with Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. Although there are persistent rumours that the fire-lily, a plant invented by Flamel's wife Perenelle, is an ingredient, the recipe for the Stone has to this day never been published._

Percy stared at this for an entire minute. Then he read it again. Then he sighed. "Conceded," he said. "The world is so  _strange_."

The twins, who had made it their life goal to make the world as strange as possible at all times, snickered. Oliver, however, stared at his friend incredulously. "You've only  _just now_ noticed that?"

Percy grumbled faintly and picked up the twins' parchment again (creatively titled, he noticed, 'What the bloody hell is up with Quirrell?'). "Spiders are scary?"

"Spiders are scary," agreed the twins in stereo, nodding seriously.

Looking like he wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer, Percy asked, " ... is there a reason for that?"

Two head shook. "They're scary," the twins repeated.

Percy frowned, but let it pass. "So, possible spider-related trauma aside ... you think that Quirrell and possibly Snape are trying to steal the Philosopher's Stone, which you think is hidden on the forbidden third-floor corridor behind a Cerberus, and you have deduced this from a number of surprisingly convincing clues." The twins nodded. Percy pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. "And you have failed to report this to the Headmaster ...  _why_ , exactly?"

"McGonagall wouldn't let us," said Fred promptly. "Because, y'know, we're us," added George.

"Ah," said Percy. Then he picked up the parchment and bookmarked the book with it, and stood up from the table. "Be back. Don't go anywhere."

"Er - "

" _I_ am not you," said Percy, "and unlike you, I know where the Headmaster's office is." Without further ado, he swept out the portrait hole, looking imperiously pompous as usual (if slightly paler than normal).

Oliver said, "I thought you two knew where everything was?"

"We do," said Fred defensively. George explained, "But Dumbledore's office is password-locked, and we don't know the password."

"Ah."

Percy returned some time later, and Fred and George's game of Exploding Snap stopped rather abruptly as they observed their brother storm into the common room. He was  _seething_. "He doesn't believe me!" he hissed as he slammed the book back onto the table and dropped, fuming, into his chair. "He just gave me this awful patronizing look and said that all the faculty have his full confidence and also it was none of my business! Me! A  _prefect!_ " He glared at the parchment as if it had somehow infused him with Fred-and-George-like incredibility and was therefore responsible for all of his problems. "And then he said that when You-Know-Who tried to break in - not if,  _when_ \- he'd have more to deal with than Fluffy and just  _dismissed_ it as if it  _wasn't a big deal_!"

There was a pause, as everyone tried to figure out which of these things to address first. Eventually Fred said, "Um,  _Fluffy_?"

"Apparently the Cerberus is named Fluffy," said Percy, grinding his teeth. "Because, you know, when it has teeth as big as Fang's head and fur that can deflect curses, that's the  _bloody obvious_ thing to name it." He blamed Hagrid. It had to have been Hagrid. No one else was that willfully oblivious to danger - except, apparently, the Headmaster. Who did not think Quirrell was going to try to steal the Stone but did think that  _Voldemort_ was going to try, which for some reason he seemed to think was  _less_ of a problem ...

Oliver looked as if he was contemplating running away before his Seeker had a complete meltdown and started hexing everything in reach, but eventually he ventured, "Perce, it's  _Dumbledore_. If he thinks it's not a big deal, maybe it isn't?"

"What part of  _You-Know-Who breaking into Hogwarts to steal the Philosopher's Stone and resurrect himself_ is  _NOT A BIG DEAL?"_ snapped Percy, only barely keeping his voice to below hysterical levels.

"Um ... "

Fred said, "Well, Dumbledore was supposed to be the only person You-Know-Who was afraid of, right?" George offered, "Maybe he figures he can stop You-Know-Who himself and that's why he's not worried."

Percy shut his eyes for a second, took a deep breath, and then said, "Sure. Okay. That makes sense. Except for the part where he decided that  _in the middle of a school_ was the best place to have this happen - "

"Maybe he didn't?" said Oliver, who was feeling very frightened by the specter of Percy Weasley  _not_ being the most calm, reasonable person in the room. (It had not occurred to him that Percy had been just old enough, when Gideon and Fabian Prewett died at the hands of Voldemort, to remember his mother crying.) Oliver was not, however, particularly frightened about the Philosopher's Stone, now that they'd gotten an official reassurance on the subject from Dumbledore. "I mean, it's not  _his,_ right, it's this Flamel guy's. So ... maybe Flamel put it here? And Dumbledore's just, you know, coping with it as best he can, which given that he's Dumbledore is pretty well?"

Percy stared at him, his eyes slightly unfocused. (He was still thinking about his mother.)

Oliver glanced at his watch and jolted. "It's like seven AM, guys. We've got to play Ravenclaw in two hours."

"Oh, wonderful," said Percy, his voice slightly strained. "I guess next time we will just have to reschedule our terrifying discoveries about the imminent possible destruction of the entire country better, next time, won't we? Oliver,  _how can you possibly be thinking about Quidditch right now -_ "

"Because I trust Dumbledore?" offered Oliver. "Also, to reiterate, two hours to kickoff."

Eventually Percy assented to stop yelling, take a shower, change, and head downstairs for breakfast. By the time they were joined at the table by the rest of Gryffindor, he had calmed down quite a bit and agreed that it was probably nothing Dumbledore couldn't handle.

Saturday morning's Quidditch game was - perhaps predictably, given the nature of sleep-deprived wizards - somewhat deranged.


	23. Life & Purpose

It wasn't that Severus didn't  _like_ being a teacher.

He genuinely enjoyed his NEWT classes, which were very small and contained only students who were actually good at the subject, and most of whom enjoyed it. That meant that he didn't need to be angry and terrifying all the time to get his students to focus on their work, and could actually focus on talking about Potions. NEWT classes were when he typically started discussing theory and how to alter potions recipes - which was the most interesting part of the subject - because any sooner and he'd likely have serious injuries every other day. So no, he didn't hate being a teacher, some parts of it were definitely great.

He just wished he could teach  _only_ the NEWT classes; because Severus had never been very good with children, even when he  _was_ a child. He did not in any way enjoy dealing with the spectacular and repetitive failures of the younger students (seriously, who turns a Shrinking Solution  _orange?_ that shouldn't even be  _possible!_ ), and occasionally grumbled to Dumbledore about this. Dumbledore ignored him, naturally.

Still, despite the relatively good balance of pleasant tasks to unpleasant ones at the moment, the Potions Master actually was starting to feel a sense of deep unhappiness in his job. This year was the year that Lily's son would have begun school,  _should have_ begun school, had Snape not been so astoundingly stupid as to get them all killed by reporting the prophecy to Voldemort. And so he felt very much like he did not belong. Who was he to be blithely going about his life, teaching classes (how strangely mundane it felt, still, after the War), as if Lily Evans had never been (and shone and fought and died)?

It helped that Voldemort wasn't, apparently, entirely dead. It gave him some kind of purpose, even if that purpose was only revenge. But it seemed strange to be casually going about his life, as if at this precise moment the Dark Lord were not plotting to steal the Philosopher's Stone, as if any day he might interrupt everything by breaking into the school. (An odd place to set a trap, Hogwarts; but apparently, Flamel had insisted.) Severus did not care about any of the students as individuals, did not have any particular attachment to any of them as  _people_ , but in ten years he had started to really think of himself as a teacher. That meant that he was responsible for them, that the students were under his protection (how strange, that he should expect to be able to protect anyone). He did not like the idea that they were here, in the building, vulnerable to danger should the Death Eaters break into the school, probably - Dumbledore said - with Quirrell's help. This concern, he had not shared; Severus suspected that Minerva would mock him for having acquired a heart.

(He had no idea, really, how they were friends. Perhaps it was just one of those things that happened to people who'd fought a war, that they could be friends with each other and not really with anyone else, even if they hadn't been on the same side.)

But he did talk to Dumbledore about the sensation of pointlessness he was experiencing. "What am I doing with my life?" he asked the Headmaster, rather plaintively.

The Headmaster had said amiably, "Living," and when Severus did not accept this at face value, sighed and offered an alternative suggestion. He proceeded to explain the present dilemma he was attempting to handle - ("What," said Severus, "the Dark Lord trying to break into your school isn't  _enough_ problems for you?") - which was that Gringotts was being strangely reticent on the subject of the Potters. Jared Nott, a close associate of Lord Malfoy, had made an inquiry of the Wizengamot as to why there were presently only six Noble Houses, and indeed there had been for ten years as of Halloween. He had wanted to know why the deaths of the Potters were not being properly addressed.

Severus had inquired at once, "Why does Nott care about the Potters?" Jared Nott, despite his age, had only one young son, presently a first year in Slytherin, because his elder children had died in 1976, at the ages of twelve and nine, during the War. No one had ever been charged with anything, but it had happened about a week after the rather violent deaths of a number of Muggle-born children attending a Muggle primary school in London at the hands of a Death Eater group (which Severus knew had indeed been led by Nott). And Charlus Potter, Lord of House Potter at the time, had been known to look unusually smug when the subject came up. So Severus thought it rather more likely that Nott would want the statue in Godric's Hollow melted for scrap, than that he'd want anyone to remember any Potters had ever existed.

Dumbledore had explained that the Nott family was, at an educated guess, the most wealthy common House in Gringotts, which meant that they were probably next in line to be ennobled. And  _then_ he'd explained: "But Gringotts, for reasons unknown to all, has steadfastly refused to appoint a new seventh Noble House. When pressed, they insisted that House Potter is  _not actually extinct._ "

This made Severus start. " _What_?"

"Apparently," said Dumbledore, "Gringotts believes that there is, in existence, a magical heir. They will not, however, disclose that person's identity, or for that matter confirm whether their surname is actually Potter. This is, as you might imagine, of some concern to me," Dumbledore sighed, "since I have in my possession an artifact which belongs rightfully to the House of Potter."

Severus frowned. "Why wouldn't it - " he began, and then stopped midsentence as the same possibility Neville Longbottom had earlier speculated on occurred to him. "A Squib descendant?"

"Or simply a descendant in the female line," pointed out Dumbledore. "For a recent example, consider Draco Malfoy, who is technically in the line of inheritance for both the Houses of Malfoy and Black, because of his mother. This is not  _common_ , but it does happen. However," he frowned. "The House of Potter is, historically, not prone to large families. James Potter was an only child, and so were his father and grandfather. Indeed, judging by the genealogy, they suffer a similar problem to that of the Weasley family, the tendency not to have female children." The Headmaster tapped his fingers absently on the table, faintly curious. "Someday I am going to have time to investigate that phenomenon."

"You think there is a magical explanation for chromosomal anomalies in wizarding families?" said Severus, distracted by the interesting academic problem. "I don't think there is much evidence for such a thing, magic is fairly prone to  _erasing_ genetic anomalies. That's why all the inbreeding hasn't killed the purebloods yet."

Dumbledore blinked several times, looking faintly disconcerted. Severus carefully controlled his amusement. The Headmaster, he found, occasionally forgot that his potions master was half-blood, had been raised in a Muggle town by a Muggle father, and had spent a rather large portion of his childhood learning Muggle science in an effort to impress Lily Evans (not that it had worked). Dumbledore himself did not do nonmagical research of any kind, and judging from his reaction, was not at all familiar with genetics. Evidently, however, he didn't want to get distracted, and so he took the pause that Severus had learned to identify as 'making a mental note', and changed the subject back. "We'll look into it. As I was saying, I do not think the odds of a Potter heir appearing in some other wizarding family are very high. A Squib descendant is  _more_ likely, but still not  _likely_."

Severus considered that. "So, you suggest that Gringotts is lying?" A Potter descendant unrelated to Lily would not be particularly interesting to him, except inasmuch as he would be inclined to kill it, but the potential problem of the goblin bank becoming rebellious  _was_ interesting. If his purpose could not be to teach (he still got less than half as many NEWT students as Minerva and Filius), could not be to protect (plotting and planning and sneaking around, but protecting was Dumbledore's job), perhaps it could still be to fight.

Dumbledore laughed outright at this, which made Severus frown at him. He knew Dumbledore well, but sometimes he still reacted in ways that were puzzling. "It is a great tragedy of our culture, Severus, that goblin insincerity is the first thing most wizards will suggest," said the Headmaster. "No, I do not think they are lying at all! I think that they assume, perhaps rightly, that what information they have is too sensitive for the ears of the Wizengamot." Oh. Well, that was fair; the Wizengamot were full of decrepit old noble folk and grasping politicians, and there were a great many things in the world that it was probably safer for them not to know.

Nodding, Severus asked, "So, then ... what  _do_ you think the goblins know?"

" _And neither can die while the other yet lives,_ " quoted Dumbledore, all levity gone from his face. "If Voldemort is still alive in some form, Severus, and I think it would be unrealistic of us to assume that he is not, then so too is Harry Potter."


	24. Why Bedtime Is Important

It is a widely-held misconception in the wizarding world that accidental magic ends at the age of eleven.

This is entirely untrue; but the misconception persists for a very simple reason. Beyond eleven, witches and wizards tend only to manifest accidental magic when they are both stressed and either drunk or very tired, and both types of situations tend to coincide with fuzzy memory. The minority of people in the magical world who are aware of this phenomenon tend towards the groups of people most likely to encounter drunk and/or exhausted people while they are themselves in possession of all of their faculties - that is, bartenders, Healers, and teachers.

Although this phenomenon does occasionally interrupt upper-year classes (McGonagall and Flitwick keep a running tally of accidental magic incidents in their NEWT classes, and anyone with more than one in a week gets remanded to Madam Pomfrey to be force-fed a sleeping draught), it does not usually cause any trouble at Quidditch games. Fifth- and seventh-year students typically make up less than a quarter of the players and of that number not all are as concerned about their examinations as their peers; and in any case just one night of missed sleep is usually not enough to exhaust a teenager sufficiently to cause problems.

But Percy and Oliver had been up well into Friday morning. Percy had promised to try to sleep at a sensible hour Friday if Oliver would stay up Thursday to study, which they had both thought was a perfectly reasonable solution until they found Friday that Oliver was too nervous to sleep. That meant they'd both had about three hours of sleep in the previous forty-eight hours. The twins, who had been in the process of recovering from spider-related trauma, hadn't done much better. And Stewart Carmichael, one of the Ravenclaw chasers, was in seventh year, taking  _all_ the electives, and hadn't had more than four hours' sleep a night in several weeks.

Thus, the situation today is highly unusual: one Ravenclaw, and  _four_ Gryffindors, are well into the danger zone.

Keith MacDougal gave Oliver Wood a  _very_ odd look when the two captains met in the middle of the field to shake hands. "Are you even trying, Wood?" he asked skeptically. "You look dead on your feet, and so do your Weasleys." Behind Oliver, the twins were leaning on each other, and Percy looked like he would dearly have loved to hex everyone in reach if that would permit him to go back to bed.

"Um," said Oliver, wincing, "I did not do that on purpose, and also shut up." He offered a half-hearted glare, which would have been sharper had he had the energy for it, or if he'd really felt all that much animosity for his opposite number. In the previous game, Slytherin's Seeker had caught the Snitch so quickly that the rest of the field hadn't had time to score any goals, putting the score at 150-0 and Slytherin's marginal score at +240, higher than Ravenclaw's present +180 and Gryffindor's +130. Ravenclaw would need to win by only seventy to win the Cup, whereas Gryffindor would need a margin of a hundred and twenty.

Which meant that this all basically rode on Percy, because Oliver would rather Ravenclaw win the Cup than Slytherin, and so he'd be making a concerted effort to  _not be losing by more than thirty,_ but had already told his Chasers that their job was mainly to maintain that balance, not to score an excessive number of goals. To win without the Snitch they'd have to be winning by more than a hundred and fifty, and Ravenclaw was  _good_ , and if they were winning by less than that but more than ninety and Cho Chang caught the Snitch, Slytherin would win the Cup and nobody wanted that to happen.

(Angelina had looked at him like he was crazy when he explained this, and said, "Wood, are you feeling okay?", because evidently it was weird that he was too tired to overwrite Percy's reasonable suggestions with his normal level of craziness. Oh, well.)

He explained this to Keith, too, since he did not like being accused of not trying to win. In response, Keith blinked at him in puzzlement. "I ... appreciate that you like me more than Flint?" he said after a moment, and then added, "But it is really, really weird that you have any faith in Percy Weasley's ability to be a better Seeker than me."

Oliver shrugged. "I work with what I've got," he said."Best of luck, MacDougal."

"And to you," the Ravenclaw replied, nodding politely as he turned to rejoin his team.

The whistle blew, and they were off.

Half an hour into the game, Lee Jordan's commentary began to get somewhat strange.

"Gryffindor in possession," he was saying, "Angelina Johnson does not seem to have noticed that her hair is purple - oops - Ravenclaw in possession, Bradley headed straight for - where did Oliver go?" (A brief pause.) "I ... think Wood's just gone invisible? Is that a foul?"

McGonagall's voice could be heard through the loudspeaker: "Not presently, but I think we may have to add it to the list."

"Sorry!" yelled Oliver in the general direction of the stands, flickering back into view as he stole the Quaffle and cast about for his Chasers. He had some trouble with this task, since everything had suddenly gone all blurry.

"Wood in possession, and he looks confused, I dunno what's up with that - "

"Glasses," explained Percy, dropping into Oliver's personal space rather suddenly. He reached out to retrieve his glasses, which had recently spent some time pretending to be an owl and then landed on Oliver's face rather than his own. (Percy had a  _rather_ powerful prescription, but the propensity of the twins to steal his glasses had made him surprisingly adept at blind navigation.)

"Bloody hell, your eyes are terrible," said Oliver, pitching the Quaffle at Katie now that he could see her properly. She dodged Ogden Quirke, tried to pass to Alicia, and had her throw intercepted by Stewart Carmichael, who whooshed off back towards the Gryffindor goalposts trailing feathers, with Alicia and Angelina in hot pursuit.

Percy said "Sorry?" in Oliver's general direction, and then quite awkwardly dodged a Bludger, which bounced off a goalpost, turned orange, and then caught Oliver in the gut as Percy was trying to right himself, looking dizzy. Oliver was knocked back about ten feet, and Carmichael took advantage of the opportunity to score, prompting a round of cheers from the Ravenclaw stands, Oliver's hair to stand on end, and a certain amount of cursing from the loudspeaker.

The high density of intermittent weird shit (as George would later describe it) did not decrease as the game went on. By the hour and a half mark, the score was 100-60 in Ravenclaw's favor, and McGonagall and Flitwick were having a quiet argument about whether they ought to call the match before someone caught fire.

By two hours, they had decided it was a bad idea to cancel the match because they might end up with a school-wide riot on their hands, judging by the amount of yelling that was happening in both scarlet- and blue-clad crowds, and they were also rather wishing something as simple as combustion would happen. Several of the brooms had attempted to pretend to be various pieces of furniture (Fred Weasley, to his evident confusion, had spent almost five minutes flying around on a squashy armchair), everything and everyone on the field had changed colour at least twice, and Oliver Wood had had an extra arm for an entire minute.

"Johnson in possession, Davies is flying to block," Lee was saying, and George hit a Bludger at the Ravenclaw Keeper, with the clear intention of distracting him so that Angelina could get by.

Roger Davies made a rather undignified squeaking noise as he was hit in the face with an extremely startled ball of grey snarling fur.

" - and George has just hit him with a - cat, I think?" said Lee, sounding baffled. "Er, and Angelina scores, ten points for Gryffindor, and I don't know what the score is because the scoreboard has been overwritten by a bunch of exclamation points, Professor, do you know what the score is?"

"A hundred to seventy, Ravenclaw," said McGonagall, who appeared to be torn between amusement and stern disapproval. Flitwick was experiencing no such conflict; he was chuckling delightedly beside his colleague.

" - a hundred to seventy, Ravenclaw in the lead, apparently," said Lee, "anyway, Ravenclaw back in possession - no, scratch that, the Quaffle just turned into a Bludger and Carmichael dropped it - it's a Quaffle again, Spinnet in possession - "

Percy Weasley observed a small sparrow flit past him, rather hazily. Everything seemed to be turning foggy and, to be entirely honest, he had no idea whether this was a true fact about the world or just a thing he was hallucinating. The bird appeared to be real, though.

He reached out with both hands and caught it.

It fluttered unhappily at him.

"Are you the Snitch?" he asked it, quite as if he expected it to answer.

It chirped.

Percy glared at it sternly. It stubbornly failed to stop being a bird.

Keith MacDougal swooped by, looking curious (and with condensation beaded all over him, so the fog was probably real; that was reassuring). "Is that a sparrow?"

"I dunno," said Percy. "I ... think it might be the Snitch?"

Below them, the grey cat had jumped onto Alicia - apparently it could still fly like a Bludger - and John Bradley had inexplicably been soaked in orange juice. Keith pulled his wand from inside his robes, pointed it at Percy, and said, " _Finite incantatem!_ "

The bird turned back into a Snitch.

Keith burst out laughing, as Lee Jordan yelled "GRYFFINDOR'S GOT THE SNITCH!", and the crowds exploded in cheers.

(Percy shrugged, put the Snitch in his pocket, dropped to the ground at speed, and promptly fell asleep. When he woke up, he was told that Angelina and Alicia had levitated their sleeping teammates back to the school after McGonagall and Flitwick dispelled the fog, and that Keith MacDougal had had trouble congratulating them properly on their win because he kept laughing too hard to speak.)


	25. Gryffindoring, Pt 2

The week of exams was stressful for everyone in Gryffindor Tower. Partly because the OWL and NEWT students were freaking out and snapping at everyone that spoke louder than a whisper, but also because everyone else was taking exams, too. The first-years were especially obsessive about it, among people who were not taking Life-Outcome-Determining Examinations (Percy kept calling them that). Though it had been long enough that they all had started to consider their studies a natural part of life, they  _were_ still thinking about Hermione Granger, and they'd ended up doing math about it. Fred and George had observed, with some amusement, that the first-year Gryffindors tended to solve problems they didn't understand by looking at them and saying, "Okay, what would Hermione do?", which usually ended in them going to the library.

"Alright, so we assume that we average somewhat above a passing grade, because in the natural state of things we probably wouldn't all do much better than passing," said Seamus, writing  _75% x 6_ at the top of a sheet of parchment. "And Hermione gets a perfect score, because all know she would." He wrote below the first line, +  _100% x 1,_ and then underneath that drew a division line and wrote  _7,_ and then stared at it for a second. Then he scratched out the arithmetic by hand, because he wasn't actually all that much better at math than the rest of them, he'd just done okay in his Muggle primary school (Dean and Parvati had also attended Muggle primary schools, unlike the others who'd been homeschooled, but Dean had spent his math class doodling on his notebook and Parvati had spent hers annoying Padma).

(  _0.75 + 0.75 + 0.75 + 0.75 + 0.75 + 0.75 + 1.0 ) / 7_ he wrote, and eventually arrived, after a certain amount of scribbling, at  _5.5/7._  Then Seamus frowned at this for a while. Eventually he recalled how to do long division and arrived, after more scribbling, at  _= 0.785._ "So since Hermione's not here to pull up the average, we've all got to do at least as well as seventy-nine percent," he concluded.

And so they obsessed.

(It had not really occurred to any of them that spending most of the year actually putting forth constant effort in class would make it much  _easier_ to score higher on the exams. The twins didn't tell them, because they were having too much fun watching their little brother and his friends be almost as freaked out as Percy for much less reason.)

* * *

At the end of the week, Ron and Neville went to visit Hagrid, to recover from their exams. Over tea and crunchy biscuits, they talked and relaxed. Hagrid had endless amusing stories about the occasionally bizarre behavior of the Hogwarts grounds, and in the conversational lulls Ron tried gamely, as he had been trying all year, to educate Neville about professional Quidditch. At one point, however, he asked curiously, "So Hagrid, how  _did_ you get hold of a Norwegian Ridgeback egg, anyway?"

"Well - "

Things happened rather quickly after that, and in the future Ron and Neville would never be able to adequately describe them except in terms of brief snippets of conversation, between which things blurred into unimportance, and a great deal of running.

* * *

For Ron, it began with very simple question.

"Hey Fred, George, do you know of a dog around here named  _Fluffy_?"

* * *

For Fred and George, it began with a panic, and running to the first person they could think of that ought to be able to deal with the problem.

"Percy! You-Know-Who knows how to get into the third floor corridor  _you've got to tell Dumbledore!"_

* * *

For Percy, it began with a flat rejection by a teacher he thought respected him.

"Mr. Weasley, as I have already told your brothers and the Headmaster has told you, the Stone is  _perfectly safe_ , it is none of your concern, and in any case, Professor Dumbledore is not here. He was called away on urgent business to the Ministry - "

* * *

There was an argument.

"We have got to do something."

"If You-Know-Who gets the Stone we are all  _royally fucked_ \- "

"Language!"

"Percy, this is really not the time to be concerned about that - "

* * *

The argument went on for awhile.

"Percy, if you're not going to be the voice of reason here - "

"We have to do  _something!_ "

"You said, no Gryffindoring!  _You_  said that!"

* * *

(They'd been there for hours, it felt like.)

"This is a  _bad idea_ , you are going to get in  _so much trouble._ "

* * *

No one could ever remember who, exactly, had decided first that they would have to go down to the third-floor corridor regardless of whether anyone else followed. It was all a blur of yelling and freckles and red hair standing on end, and the rest of the House of Gryffindor staring in shock and confusion at the dispute. In retrospect, however, they would eventually agree that it had probably been Ron.

* * *

None of the Weasleys, however, would ever forget the image of round-faced, pudgy, unimposing eleven-year-old Neville Longbottom, panting from running up the stairs after Ron. He'd faced down the four of them and their argument, their conclusion that something had to be done, alone. He'd been a head shorter than any of them and all the same stood there, with his fists raised in a bizarre, childish caricature of defiance.

"I won't let you! I'll - I'll fight you!"

* * *

The rest of Gryffindor would not remember this. They, instead, would mostly remember Percy Weasley, standing in the middle of the room with his wand raised.

" _Stupefy! Anyone else?"_

(And after that, there was silence.)

* * *

The four Weasleys left the Common Room, three of them gaping openly at the eldest member of their group, who was striding rather quickly down the hallway with a grim expression on his face. "Percy," said Ron, after about five minutes of following in stunned silence.

"Yes?" replied Percy, quite calmly.

" ... did you actually just hex Neville?"

"Technically," said Percy, staring at the door to the forbidden third-floor corridor, which was ajar, "Stupefy is a  _jinx_ , not a hex."

* * *

(He could deny it all his life if he liked, and perhaps he would, but Percy Weasley really was a Gryffindor.)

* * *

The sound of growling greeted them as they stepped into the forbidden third floor, and Percy flinched so hard that if you'd asked any of the other three Weasleys in that split second whether they thought he was about to bolt, they'd have all said  _definitely_. But he didn't, despite the fact that entering Forbidden territory was clearly frightening him a great deal more than Fluffy was. Rather, he took a step forward, and said, "Ron, what did you say Hagrid said about the dog?"

Ron gulped. "He, um," he stammered, "he said you need  _music_..." It sounded patently ridiculous, that suggestion, in the face of the snarling dog itself, but that was what Hagrid had said; and judging by the door-left-ajar and the absence of any other presence in the room, Snape or Quirrell or whoever (there was some general disagreement on this point) had gone down the trapdoor.

Fred hummed a phrase, and then George picked it up, and then the pair of them burst into song without further ado: " _Beat back those Bludgers, boys, and chuck that Quaffle here!_ " Their voices were high and somewhat nervous, which made them sound patently ridiculous, but they could carry a tune, and apparently that was good enough. Ron scampered over to the trapdoor as Fluffy began to droop. Then the dog began to come alert again, as the twins discovered that they did not actually remember any more of the words: " _We'll get the Golden Snitch again and - da da da-da_ shit uh - "

Fluffy growled.

The third line was  _almost_ the same as the first - " _Beat back those Bludgers, boys, and_  - "

Percy, scrunching his face together into a grimace of almost comical pain, joined in. " -  _toss that Quaffle down_ ," he supplied. His voice had dropped properly about a year and a half ago, but he had never actually been any good at singing, and his scratchy baritone only sort of hit all the right notes, which made Fluffy give him an almost intelligently sardonic look ( _seriously? Is that the best you can do? I should eat you for the insult_ ). The twins, however, evidently did not think that right this second was a great time to mock their brother. Their bright tenor joined him again a moment later. " _Just listen to that crowd cheer, what a wondeeeer-ful sound!_ "

Ron got the trapdoor open, glanced between the yawning dark and the only-precariously-nodding-off-Cerberus, and chose the trapdoor. He jumped. The others made it through about two lines of the first verse before the twins dragged Percy bodily through the trapdoor, into a tangled pile of limbs and slithering vines. "You know," said Percy conversationally, "if someone had told me that my life would  _actually_ depend on my ability to remember the words of Puddlemere United's anthem, I would have told them they were out of their mind."

"How  _do_ you even know that?" asked George, as Fred muttered " _Lumos_ " and looked around.

Percy gave his brother a sardonic look. "George, I have lived with  _Oliver Wood_ for five years." Oliver had wanted to join Puddlemere more or less ever since he'd found out about the existence of Quidditch; he actually sometimes sang the fight song in his sleep.

George was clearly about to make a snarky comment in reference to this, when Ron made a whimpering noise, and Fred said, "Hey, uh, not to interrupt what would no doubt have been a hilarious argument about Oliver's priorities, but can anyone remember which plant it is that tries to strangle people?"

"Devil's Snare," said Percy automatically, and then, running a little slow on panic, his brain registered the question a moment later. " _What_? Is that what we're sitting on?"

"Yeah, I think so - "

Percy did not bother to try to explain anything. He'd just taken his Herbology OWL a few days ago and did not feel in any way inclined to let his brothers get strangled by something they should have learned about in first year, much as that would be hilarious. He was really way too stressed out already to be coping with his mother's disapproval. " _Inflammare!_ "

" _Ow!_ _"_  yelped Ron as he hit the floor underneath the Devil's Snare with an audible  _thump_. "Perce, you just  _set me on fire!_ "

The dangerous nature of the situation did not in any way prevent the twins from bursting out laughing at this complaint, nor did it dim their amusement that Percy glared at them, folding his arms and ceasing entirely to move. Ron, muttering things to himself that would almost definitely have made his mother ground him for a month, jumped up and down on his flaming robes and tried to remember the wand movement for  _aguamenti_.

"Got any light spells that  _won't_  set us on fire?" giggled George as Percy began to sink through the plants. Fred said, sound a bit alarmed, "Uh, Perce, it's got you a bit tight there - "

" _Relax_ ," said Percy airily, "and I won't  _have_  to set you on fire."

He did not hit the floor with any more grace than Ron had - probably less, even - but he got to his feet with a minimum of fuss and doused Ron's somewhat-charred robes for him. Ron grumbled something like "Thank you" and put them back on over his uniform, bemoaning the lecture he was going to get from their mother over them later.

"What do you mean, relax?" shouted George. "It's a bit hard to  _relax_ when you've got a plant trying to eat you!" agreed Fred. "You've just got done doing OWLs, you've  _got_ to know some kind of super-Lumos spell..."

Percy turned to Ron and inquired politely, "Do  _you_ know how to cast a Sunlight Charm?" Ron raised an eyebrow. "Because  _I_ think it would be much funnier to temporarily set them on fire, personally."

McGonagall had often expressed the desire to immolate the Weasley twins for their shenanigans; in the wizarding world, being set on fire was not nearly as dangerous as it was in the Muggle world, after all. They wouldn't be  _hurt_ , just frightened and hopefully slightly inconvenienced. Although - it  _was_ sort of weird that Percy was being so flippant about this. On Halloween he'd seemed frightened, with the Norbert adventure he'd been sharply controlled; Percy's behavior now smelt dangerously of an imminent breakdown. So Ron did the only thing he could: tried to ignore it. He said, wryly, "You have been spending  _way_ too much time with McGonagall."

"Possibly," said Percy brightly. "Better me than Oliver, though, he'd probably give them detention every time they were late to practice."

Ron laughed at that, but then got to business. He  _did_ in fact know the Sunlight Charm, which Professor Sprout had mentioned in class and Ron's study group had looked up. Parvati had figured it out first and showed everyone else, and Ron had been close to last to get it (Charms still wasn't his strong point), but he had learned. He pointed his wand at the ceiling of plants above them, inscribed a circle with it, and said, " _Lumos solem!_ "  _  
_

A moment later, in a tangle of coughing limbs, the twins scrambled to their feet and dusted themselves off. " _Thank you_ ," said George. "We are  _never_ yelling at you for studying ever again," said Fred, clapping his little brother on the shoulder. "Well, at least not for a year or so," added George, who had a slightly more realistic ability to assess their tendency to take things seriously.

Ron laughed. "I'll take that."

The four of them, more-or-less unharmed, headed onward. Cautiously stepping through a door, the Weasleys found themselves faced with an odd sight: a broomstick lying abandoned on the floor, and a bunch of fluttering winged keys of myriad colours, and a great ornate door on the opposing side of the room. Fred and George skittered across the room, emboldened when they were not attacked. " _Alohomora!_ " said Fred, tapping the lock, and then George pulled on the door. It remained firmly locked. He shrugged. "Worth a try."

"So one of the keys, then," said Ron, looking around in dismay. "There must be hundreds of them."

"Probably real old," said George, frowning at the lock. Fred added, "Silver."

Percy brandished his wand and said, " _Accio old silver key!_ ", but absolutely nothing happened. He sighed. To no one in particular, he grumbled, "No, of course not, why would this be  _sensible?_ ", and then strode over to the broom lying innocently on the ground. "Anyone want to bet the keys attack me as soon as I pick this up?" he inquired. Three heads shook. No, they were not in the habit of making poor bets. "Anyone know a Shield Charm? We did those in third year ... " But no, the twins were shaking their heads. " ... right, Greengrass was the only competent Defense professor we've had since Director Bones was here in Bill's second year, wasn't he.  _Great_." And it wasn't as if it would be at all sensible to make anyone else do this. Ron only barely knew how to fly, and the twins, human Bludgers though they were, were  _terrible_ at catching things, even Quaffle-sized things.  _  
_

This was going to suck.

"Sorry!" said Fred apologetically, though it wasn't really his fault that he had never had a competent Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. George added, "We can  _try._ "

Percy made a face. "We don't exactly have time for this," he said, "but better than not, I suppose. Really quick - wand like so," he demonstrated, "wrist flick thus, and  _Protego!_ " It was not the best shield - Percy's wavered - but it did exist. Edward Greengrass (now reportedly an Unspeakable - it was widely agreed that the entire student body had been Obliviated when he left, because  _no one_ could remember what had happened) had been a decent instructor. "Go ahead and try," he said, "and be ready to run."

He picked up the broomstick. To absolutely no one's surprise, the entire roomful of keys immediately wheeled about and dived on him. Percy sighed again and took off, wishing he'd brought his own broom. This one was really not that great, which was probably the point.

"There!" yelled George, "that one!", and Percy followed his pointing finger to an ornate silver key with blue wings, struggling along on a bent wing. Evidently, someone had caught it earlier. Well, that boded well, thought Percy sarcastically. This was such an amazingly bad idea.

Ten minutes later, covered in tiny scratches and gasping for breath, Percy hit the ground none-too-gracefully and ran for the door. He shoved the key into Ron's hand and paused to pant for breath as his little brother fumbled the key into the lock. Fred and George were yelling " _Protego!_ " repeatedly in an attempt to fend off the still-aggressive keys; only about one in every three or four even remotely had any effect, but it was at least preventing them all from turning into pincushions, and as Percy couldn't seem to get enough air into his lungs to help them, he appreciated it.

The lock clicked, and Ron didn't so much open the door as drive his shoulder into it and run into the next room. In a disorganized tumble the four Weasleys progressed to the other side. Fred and George whistled at the sight before them as Percy slammed the door, wincing at the sound of the keys dive-bombing it  _en masse_.

A giant chessboard was painted across the floor, and on it stood great stone pieces, staring impassively at one another, yet nevertheless beckoning silently.  _Play with us_. Ron said quietly, "Oh, no."

Percy said, "You have  _got_  to be kidding me."

"Well," said George, "do  _you_ know how to cursebreak, Perce? 'Cause  _we_ don't." The unspoken point lingered in the air: unless you can take the chessboard apart, you'll have to play your way across it like a sap walking right into a trap. Or else you turn around and go home; and they were too Gryffindor for that.

Percy rubbed his temples. "I am not  _actually_ that good at chess," he said, "I'm good at playing chess  _against Ron._ " He knew his little brother well enough, and had played enough with him, to accurately predict his moves well enough to be a decent challenge. But he'd tried playing with Alicia Spinnet once - she was half-decent at the game - and lost rather spectacularly.  _  
_

Fred clapped his little brother on the back cheerfully. "Well then!" he said. "Guess you're in charge, Ronnikins."

Ron made a strangled, terrified noise, and then took a deep, measured breath. "Right," he said. "Right. Okay. Give me a second." He stared at the board. "We're supposed to play black, obviously."

"I do not appreciate your unsubtle symbolism, Headmaster," grumbled Percy under his breath.

Ron ignored this comment, evidently in favor of things he understood. "Fred, George, you play the rooks," he said, "and I'll be a knight." Percy could guess why he'd chosen those; Ron had a tendency to use his bishops as cannon fodder and his Queen as a sacrifice piece, whereas he often had rooks and knights left at the end of the game. But he was a little puzzled when Ron added, "and Perce, you be the King."

Percy blinked. " _What_?"

The twins were already hopping onto the board, fearless as ever. Percy wished he could ignore stress and panic as easily as they seemed to be able to. Ron shrugged a bit fatalistically as he headed towards a knight, past the black castles which were drifting out of the twins' way. "I'm twelve, and not that smart," he said bluntly. "Fred and George are brilliant, but they're only two years older than me. Realistically, you're the only one of us that has  _any_ chance  _at all_ of even slightly inconveniencing You-Know-Who." He swung up onto a stone horse with surprising grace. Maybe he'd been practicing his broomstick riding more than Percy thought. "So you're the King."

Percy could not fault this logic, uncomfortable as it made him. So he stepped onto the board and took the place of the King. "White moves first," said Ron, and sure enough, one of the white pawns slid implacably across the board.

The first time one of their pawns was taken, it was knocked to pieces with brutal efficiency, and Percy could see Ron cringe even from most of the way across the board.

The only thing Percy could think was,  _Oh, Merlin, Mum is going to kill me._


	26. Quirrelmort

Ron was biting holes in his lower lip, but he didn't seem to have noticed that he was bleeding; he was too focused on the game. Unlike every other game of chess he'd played - even against Alicia, who had proposed forfeit terms and had subsequently been dragged giggling and shrieking into the lake in February - this one had real, potentially  _dangerous_ consequences if he lost. Or even, Percy thought with a wince as the White Queen took apart a pawn mere feet from Fred, if he didn't.

"Fred, take that bishop," ordered Ron, "er, I mean, queen's rook to H-6." Fred strode forward, and then slowed as the problem visibly occurred to him. How was he supposed to  _take_ anything? He didn't have a giant stone sword like the other pieces (or giant stone fists, in the case of the White Queen). "Just sort of ... walk into its space I guess?" suggested Ron dubiously when he noticed this problem.

Percy was quietly trying to remember the wand movements for a Reductor Curse, which he'd passed over briefly in his Defense textbook but not learned as it wasn't on the official OWL syllabus. Fred awkwardly stepped into the white bishop's space, making a vague  _go away!_ gesture at it; Percy could swear that the bishop actually raised an eyebrow at Fred. He said, "Fred, you may want to duck?", and then aimed his wand and prayed he was remembering correctly. " _Reducto!_ "

Fred hit the floor with surprising speed, and the bishop crumbled. It didn't explode dramatically like Percy had rather been hoping, and most of its constituent pieces were quite large. He made a mental note to practice his offensive spells more, if he survived this. Still, the enchanted board seemed to consider this an acceptable level of destruction, and the white pieces made their move as Fred scrambled back to his feet looking slightly surprised. "Where'd you learn that?" said George curiously. "No offense, Perce, but you aren't exactly the type to practice Curses."

"I do  _read_ ," said Percy airily, not feeling strongly inclined to admit that he'd just made a mental resolution to do just that. He wanted to be prepared if something like this happened again, but he certainly didn't want to  _encourage_ it to. A few minutes later, there was a decided pause. Percy shot Ron a quizzical look; his little brother appeared to be thinking very hard suddenly. "You alright, Ron?" he asked in concern.

"Um," said Ron. "Well ... no, not really."

"What's wrong?"

Ron swallowed. "I have two workable plans for winning this game," he explained. "Either of which would go fine, if we were playing normal chess. But we  _aren't_ , and - " Ron stopped, biting his lip. "Do you have any parchment on you?"

Percy blinked. "What?" he said. "No, I don't, why do you - oh.  _No,_ Ron, absolutely not." Fred and George both jumped; Percy supposed his voice must have gone rather sharp.

"No, what?" said George, who was standing closer to them at the moment, looking puzzled.

There was only one logical reason Ron might have wanted Percy to write down a bunch of instructions. He wanted to give him a flowchart (if white does  _x_ , you do  _y_ ) for winning, because he firmly expected not to be able to do it himself. "Ron is going to try to  _sacrifice himself,_ " said Percy, "and that is  _not acceptable_  in any way, shape, or form - "

"Would you rather both the twins?" snapped Ron. He looked very pale, which made his bleeding lower lip stand out even more sharply against his freckled face, but also very determined. "That's the other option, Percy, I lose  _both_ of them to trap the White King, but I can do it myself and the three of you can go through - "

" _No_ ," said Percy flatly, "no, absolutely not, unacceptable. Find another way."  _  
_

Ron shook his head. "There isn't one," he said, "I've _been_ trying. I know you lot think I'm a prodigy at this or whatever, but I'm not perfect, I'm only twelve, I'm pretty sure I'm playing McGonagall, and anyway you need Fred and George more than you need me, we don't know how many more traps there are - "

"Use us," interrupted Fred, his voice uncharacteristically serious.

Ron's head snapped around in surprise to look at his other brother. "What?"

"Use us," repeated Fred. George was nodding. "We take hits better than you do, we're less likely to die." "And what if we screw this up after you're out?" George added pointedly, as Ron gaped at them, "Then we  _all_ lose, You-Know-Who gets the Stone, and everyone is royally screwed."

Percy made a frustrated noise. This was not how heroic adventures were supposed to go, this was why he hated having to play hero. You weren't supposed to sit there and play the King while your younger brothers argued over who got to die. They were his  _little brothers,_ it was  _his job_ to protect them, not their job to protect him. He shouldn't've let them come along in the first place ( _but Percy,_  said a mutinous part of his brain,  _you'd be dead by now without them, and then where would all this heroing business be?_ ) But still - "No, this is ridiculous, I am not letting  _any_ of you play martyr."

"We haven't got a choice, Percy," said George. Fred nodded. "Like Ron said earlier - we're all more dispensable than you. And right now,  _we're_ more dispensable than Ron, because he needs to win the game." As one, the twins took a fortifying breath. George said steadily, "This is how you felt when you rescued Granger, isn't it?"

Percy frowned, feeling a deep sense of unease as the situation spiraled out of his control. "What?"

"Like - as if it was your  _duty_ to do whatever - " "even really dangerous stuff - " "to save the day." "Because there was no one else to do it."

Percy stared at them, his mouth dry. That was, in fact,  _exactly_ how he'd felt. He'd said as much to everyone who'd asked.  _I'm not a hero. I was just doing my duty as a prefect._ Because no one else had been there, no one else had been close enough. And he'd done it without thinking - they had time to think, and they were choosing the dangerous path anyway. Percy would have dearly loved to stop them, to throw himself into the line of fire instead, but Ron had already prevented him from doing that by making him play the King. And now Ron was directing the pieces, and hesitantly accepting the twins' decision with a sort of stoic terror; and Percy didn't have any say in the matter at all.

_Bloody stupid Gryffindor heroes._

Percy looked away, and gritted his teeth.

Even shutting his eyes, however, could not prevent him from  _hearing_ the sickening crunch of stone fist on bone, nor the horrible half-muffled gasping noise that Fred made when George was flung off the board, nor the sound of Ron's voice, cracked with suppressed tears, ordering Fred to the same fate.

Ron was crying in earnest by the time he took his last skittering steps and said, in a shaking voice that echoed strangely in the hall, "Checkmate."

Percy broke his stoic frozen stance and bolted off the board towards the twins.

"Fred George Fred George please don't be dead please," he gasped, as he knelt beside their crumpled forms and Ron's shorter strides clattered up behind him. They were both bleeding from the temples, and George's arm was bent in a decidedly unnatural way. Percy felt for pulses - he reached out with both hands, because there was no part of him whatsoever that was capable of deciding between the two of them - and very nearly collapsed in relief. "They're breathing," he said, "they're both breathing, Ron, they're alive."

Ron expelled a great shuddering breath, almost a sob. "Oh," he said, "thank Merlin."

With great effort, Percy got back to his feet. "We've got to - keep going," he said, "they're not going to get worse in the next hour - "  _I hope_ " - and we really can't do anything for them ourselves." He shut his eyes briefly and took a deep, steadying breath. "Come on. We'll - as soon as we run into someone else, you run back here and get them to Madam Pomfrey, alright?"

Ron's eyes got very wide. "And leave you  _alone_?" he squeaked.

" _Yes_ _,"_ said Percy sharply. "You're the one who said I'm the only one with a realistic chance - that doesn't mean I'm going to let you be dragon fodder! You are  _not_ dying on my watch, you are going to  _run_ the second I tell you to, is that clear?"

Ron's eyes were still very wide -  _I don't want you to die either_ \- but he nodded.

And through the door they went, unmolested by the white chess pieces that watched them sternly as they went.

* * *

At once they were assaulted by the awful stench of troll, which very nearly made Percy turn and bolt on the spot.

 _I have PTSD,_ he observed almost dryly to himself as Hermione Granger's shrieking echoed at the back of his mind.  _Fan-fucking-tastic._

"It's - dead, I think," said Ron doubtfully, holding his nose and nudging the troll with the toe of his sneaker. "Or sleeping, maybe?"

"Either way let's move," said Percy very quickly, skirting the troll as widely as he could given the size of the room and heading for the opposing door. "Whoever's ahead of us took it out, and we might as well be thankful."

Ron shrugged and followed, still very pale, his wand shaking in his hand. The next room didn't appear to contain an obvious threat at all - at least it didn't, until flames sprung up in the doorway they'd just entered through, to match the ones on the opposing side. With Ron trailing him, Percy very carefully approached the table in the middle of the room, with its seven differently-sized bottles all waiting innocuously in a row. And on the table, a scroll of parchment.

" _Danger lies before you,_ _while safety lies behind._

_Two of us will help you, whichever you would find._

_One among us seven will let you move ahead;_

_Another will transport the drinker back instead._

_Two among our number hold only nettle wine;_

_Three of us are killers, waiting hidden in line._

_Choose, unless you wish to stay here for evermore._

_To help you in your choice, we give you these clues four:_

_First, however slyly the poison tries to hide, y_ _ou will always find some on nettle wine's left side;_

_Second, different are those who stand at either end, b_ _ut if you would move onward, neither is your friend;_

_Third, as you see clearly, all are different size - n_ _either dwarf nor giant holds death in their insides;_

_Fourth, the second left and the second on the right a_ _re twins once you taste them, though different at first sight._ "

"A logic puzzle," said Percy, staring at it.

Ron, in a nervous attempt at levity, said, "See, I told you we need you, Perce. S'gibberish to me."

Percy made a valiant attempt to laugh, failed utterly, and set to work. Ron, thankfully, was entirely silent as Percy muttered to himself, drawing imaginary charts in the air with his fingers and pointing from one bottle to the other. This was not the sort of thing he did for fun, but it was the sort of thing he was  _good_  at, since it involved basic deductive reasoning and, like Arithmancy, did not require you to make  _arguments_ for your facts; they were either true or they weren't.

A while later he had two bottles in hand: the smallest one, which (at least according to the riddle) contained a potion that would permit someone to pass forward through the black flames; and the mid-sized one which purported to take them back. Without a word he handed Ron the larger of the two. Ron gave him a quizzical look. "This'll take you back," he said. "Go get the twins, use that broomstick in the flying keys room to get past the Snare and Fluffy, you're going to need to take a couple trips - "

"You're going in alone?" squeaked Ron, interrupting with horror in his voice.

Percy nodded, though he very much did not want to. He  _wished_ he could take his little brother with him, selfish though that desire was; he wanted company, he didn't  _want_ to go face Voldemort all alone. But there was only enough potion for one, and if there was anything he didn't want even more than he didn't want to fight Voldemort, it was that he didn't want Ron to do it. So he nodded, and said, "Yes. We discussed this. Do not argue with me. Get the twins to Madam Pomfrey, and then ... " he thought for a second " ... and then go to the Owlery. McGonagall was no help earlier and she's not going to be any help now, but Dumbledore might be, given all the proof. Get Hermes and write him out everything we know, and then ... "

After a moment or two of silence, Ron ventured, "And then?"

Percy took a deep breath. "I don't know. And then pray I don't get myself killed, I guess." He drank the potion before he could change his mind, and headed through the black flames. Behind him, he thought he heard Ron's voice shouting, but he didn't understand the words through the roaring of the fire.  _  
_

* * *

Quirrell. Standing in front of the mirror, making frustrated gestures at it. Well, at least they'd already guessed it was probably Quirrell; that meant Percy didn't have to spare a moment for confusion. " _Stupefy!_ " he hissed, as quietly as possible, pointing his wand at the Defense professor's back. What was it Professor Greengrass had said?  _Ninety percent of battles are won by ambushes,_ he'd said, when explaining why they needed to know how to defend themselves even if they weren't expecting to be attacked.

Quirrell turned, batting the red bolt away with his wand as if it were an impudent fly, and not even bothering to cast a formal shield charm. Since when had  _Quirrell_ been any good at duelling? He was afraid of  _everything -_ oh. Right. He was probably a Death Eater only pretending to be incompetent.  _Think a little, Weasley,_ Percy chided himself, and tried to control the urge to panic. Bracing himself to duck, he said with an almost-steady sigh, "I was  _really_ hoping that would work."

"Your overconfidence is almost amusing," observed Quirrell dryly, all hint of a stutter gone. He'd fixed his gaze on Percy, as well as the point of his wand, and looked a great deal more frightening, somehow, even though nothing about him had particularly changed from the Quirrell who had stammered his way through a year of substandard, mostly-theoretical Defense classes. Something about him radiated evil. "What are  _you_ doing here, Weasley?"

 _Good question,_ Percy thought. What  _was_ he doing here? "Er ... trying to stop you?" he offered after a moment, awkwardly, still pointing his wand at the Professor-turned-probably-Death-Eater and wondering whether it would actually do him any good.

"Stop me from doing what?" grinned Quirrell, looking terribly amused, as if Percy's incompetence existed purely for the purpose of being his personal entertainment. "Killing you? Convincing everyone that  _p-p-poor st-stuttering P-P-P-Professor Quirrell_ is exactly as harmless as he looks? Resurrecting the Dark Lord?"

Percy was starting to feel a distinct sense of being toyed with. He wished he had some clever method of elongating this conversation, to stall for time until Ron could get hold of Dumbledore. But he couldn't actually think of anything. So he just uncomfortably offered the truth: "Um ... all of those things?"

"Too late," said Quirrell smugly, "to all three."

 _Well, fuck_.

" _Avada ked - "_

" _Hold_!" hissed a new voice, as Percy was midway through lunging desperately sideways to try to avoid the green death that would have shortly been headed his way. Quirrell's voice had stopped on the instant when it was interrupted by a great echoing hiss, a voice that made shivers run up Percy's spine and made him very much want to run away as fast as he could and never, ever try to do anything this stupid ever again. (Which was sort of how he'd felt on Halloween, and also for the entire last hour or so of his life; if this was how heroing felt all the time, Percy was starting to really wonder how anything heroic ever got done, ever.) " _We can use the boy!_ "

Er - what?

Percy did not at all have time to try to analyze this new development, as he had abruptly found himself divested of his wand, and had his hands wrenched rather painfully behind his back. Before he could properly wonder where that voice was coming from (the voice of Voldemort? from  _where?_ _)_ , he had been shoved rather unceremoniously in front of the great clawfooted Mirror that stood behind Quirrell. Percy frankly had no idea why he'd felt the need to give the Mirror a capital letter in his mind, it just seemed like the sort of artifact that deserved a capital letter. "Look into the Mirror, boy!" snapped Quirrell.

 _Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi,_ the Mirror's inscription read. Not a language he recognized.

For lack of a better option, he looked into the Mirror. To his immense surprise, he didn't see himself standing there looking back at him, as one might naturally have expected from a mirror. Rather, he saw himself sitting in the Burrow, reading a book, in the background of a moving scene. In the foreground, Fred and George were chasing Ginny around the living room, while Ron laughed silently from the couch and yelled unknown encouragements; it looked like Ginny had stolen something from the twins. Was this the  _future_? Did that mean Fred and George and Ron were all okay? Percy desperately hoped so -

"Well?" said Quirrell impatiently. Percy startled; he'd nearly forgotten Quirrell was there, so absorbed had he been for a moment in the picturesque scene before him. "What do you see, boy?"

"What?" said Percy blankly. Why on Earth would Quirrell care? "I - I see my family," he said truthfully, too startled to even begin to think of a clever lie, or even a stupid lie. "What does this d - " He stopped suddenly, because even as he asked, he was staring at the inscription, and the letters were rearranging themselves in his head. Anagrams weren't an uncommon occurrence in Runes classes.

_I show not your face but your hearts desire._

A very small part of him wanted to reach up and carve an apostrophe into the mirror; all the other parts of him immediately shoved that part back into oblivion, screaming (are you serious) (what a stupid idea) (this is the worst possible time for that) (you complete nutcase) and other such objections.  _  
_

" - oh."

So Quirrell wanted the Stone; he presumably looked into the Mirror and saw himself using it to resurrect Voldemort. Or possibly  _further_ -resurrect Voldemort, if that voice was indeed the disembodied spirit of the not-entirely-deceased dark wizard. ( _Actually_ , pointed out the part of Percy's brain that was not currently freaking out over the reminder that Voldemort was possibly in the room with him,  _that would totally explain the unicorns._ )  _  
_

What did he want from Percy, then? If Percy had been sufficiently not distracted by his family being in danger, he might indeed have seen himself with the Philosopher's Stone; endless wealth and immortality would enable him to have the success he'd always wanted, he'd be able to buy his mum the new marble counter-top she wanted, and shiny things for Ginny because his baby sister should have all the jewelry she wanted, and he could have all the books he wanted and all the time in the world to read them - (he tore his mind away from the daydream with effort) - but how would that actually have been _helpful_? Obviously Quirrell wanted it too, and seeing the Stone in the mirror hadn't actually provided him with information about how to get it. Dumbledore wasn't stupid; Percy didn't think he'd have much better luck. Well, in stories evil wizards were always delighted to explain their plots; maybe he should just ask. Hesitantly, Percy said aloud, "Er - what were you expecting, exactly?"

"The Stone is  _in the mirror_ ," hissed Quirrell angrily, "and you can't get it either - he is useless, my Lord, may I kill him now?"

Dismissively, the hoarse voice of Voldemort (seriously,  _where was that coming from?_ ) said, "If you like, I do not need him."

So much for that.

" _Avada kedavra!"_

Percy flung himself to the floor, entirely gracelessly; his hands were still tied, and he cracked his shoulder against the stones. Ignoring the pain out of sheer panicked adrenaline, he twisted desperately, suspecting he no longer had enough mobility to get out of range of a second shot and having to try anyway. Above his head, the brilliant green light bounced off the Mirror.

The voice of Voldemort made an entirely horrifying shrieking sound. " _Idiot!_ " it railed, " _fool, useless failure -_ " and more profanity that Percy had stopped listening to, because his brain had focused entirely on the one fact that he had gleaned from it. Quirrell had fired a Killing Curse at a mirror, reasonably expecting the mirror to shatter. Unforgivables didn't, Percy was rather sure, normally bounce off of anything, not even reflective surfaces, that was how the merpopulation in the Baltic had been eradicated with Killing Curses in the 1100s, they didn't bounce off of water (or mirrors) like normal spells... and apparently this Mirror had proven the exception to the rule. The Killing Curse had bounced, and it had  _hit Quirrell_.

But apparently not Voldemort, though the shrieking appeared to have stopped.

_Okay, genius, your Defense professor's dead and the disembodied spirit of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is running around loose. What now?_

Percy was halfway through an awkward attempt to get to his feet when a sort of invisible smoke hit him full in the face, and he collapsed as his head exploded with pain. It was the sort of pain that was  _nonsensical_ , like there wasn't really any possible physical explanation for it; surely there wasn't  _actually_ anything in  _actual_ real life that you could do that would hurt this much. As if every nerve in his body had been set on fire, all at the same time. That shouldn't be a  _real thing._ For a moment he tried to reject it as impossible, it must be an illusion; but then that didn't actually help, and he gave up, because his brain simply didn't have enough processing power to  _ignore_ something so enormous.

Some part of him wondered if this was what it felt like to die.

It was only a very small part, though. The rest of him was occupied with the sound of Voldemort's voice, abruptly gentle. That voice was purring in his mind,  _Do as I say, child, the pain will stop if you do._ It seemed like such a sensible thing to do, really. Simple possession, painless and guiltless and easy, what a pleasant alternative to this pain ... Surely no one would blame him if he succumbed, he was only a kid, after all, it wasn't  _his_ job to stand up Voldemort, that was what real Gryffindors were for ...

_No, no, no, no, I am a Weasley, no, I won't, I WON'T -_

Everything went dark.


	27. Victory Without A Prize

Percy gradually became aware of the fact that he wasn't dead. Then he blinked a couple of times and noticed that he was in the hospital wing, for the second time this year; at a distance, he could hear the sound of Ron, his stubborn voice carrying easily through the quiet space. "I'm  _fine_ , Neville! Merlin's pants, you could give Lavender a run for her money at being smothering - "

Percy sat bolt upright. " _Ron!"_ He nearly yelled. Neville, who was standing next to Ron's bed, jumped about three feet and made a terrified whimpering noise, which sent a spike of sharp guilt through Percy. He'd hexed the poor kid, and Neville had only been trying to do the right thing; an apology was probably in order. But first things first. "Ron, where are Fred and George? What happened?"

"They're fine," Ron said immediately, prioritizing correctly, and then gave a quick summary of the story. "We're not sure what happened to  _you_ , but I got them out with levitation charms and Fluffy almost bit my arm off, and then I didn't even have to go to the Owlery because we ran into Dumbledore halfway across the third floor. He turned up in the hospital wing with you a half-hour later looking right angry about something - dunno what - and by then Madam Pomfrey had already put the twins to rights. She made them stay overnight because of maybe concussions, but they got to leave like two days ago,  _I'm_ still here because like I said, Fluffy nearly took my arm off - "

" _Two days ago_?" interrupted Percy, shocked.

Ron blinked. "Oh - yeah - you've been out cold for like three days, Perce. Mum was in a right state when she found out what happened - "

" _Mum_ was here?" Percy interrupted again.

At that, Ron looked almost confused. "Well, yeah, obviously," he said, "I mean, they send letters home when we get  _detention,_ of course they told Mum. I think McGonagall Floo-called her, actually, she turned up about five minutes after Dumbledore did. And then we had to try to explain to everyone what happened, and I think Mum couldn't decide whether to be really angry or really proud of us, it was sort of funny, actually. She'll be over the moon to hear you're up. What happened? Dumbledore said you duelled Quirrell?"

Percy made a face. " _Duelled_ is a strong word," he said wryly. "More like  _accidentally didn't get murdered by_." He made a helpless gesture. "Apparently the nifty magic mirror reflects Killing Curses. All I did was duck."

"On the contrary," said Dumbledore, "you did a great deal." Percy startled and turned around in a hurry. The Headmaster had just, as far as Percy could tell, materialized out of nowhere. Though, he supposed that they hadn't exactly been paying a great deal of attention to their surroundings, and so Dumbledore had probably just walked up behind Percy while he wasn't looking.

"What?" said Percy. What had  _he_ done? Hex Neville? Seriously endanger himself and several other students? Not die?

"Voldemort attempted to possess you, Mr. Weasley," explained Dumbledore, bright blue eyes twinkling behind his glasses, "and failed. That, in itself, is a remarkable accomplishment for you."

"Er," said Percy. "Oh." Then he remembered  _why_ Voldemort had tried to possess him. "What happened to the Stone? Where did You-Know-Who go?  _Was_ he colluding with Snape?"

Dumbledore chuckled. "The Stone is quite safe, Mr. Weasley," he said. "Voldemort has retreated, thankfully, and with any luck we shan't see him again too soon. And no,  _Professor_ Snape," he gave Percy a pointed look, and Percy winced, "was very much on our side. Indeed, he has been monitoring Professor Quirrell all year, in case of just such a scenario as the one that took place this past weekend. It was he who warned me that you and your brothers had become involved."

Percy frowned at Dumbledore. Something was nagging at him, a piece of the puzzle not quite fitting. "The Stone is safe," he said, " _how_ , exactly?"

The Headmaster somehow managed to look humbly smug, which was something Percy had never seen anyone achieve before. "Ah," said Dumbledore, "that is the question, isn't it." He smiled at Percy. "You noticed, I take it, that Professor Quirrell was looking into the Mirror of Erised and seeing only himself  _with_ the Stone, not how to acquire it?"

Percy nodded. "Something like that. So, what, was it hidden under the floor or something?" He paused. "Or was it  _in_ the Mirror somehow?" Dumbledore nodded, twinkling, and opened his mouth to explain, but something was off, again, and Percy was barely listening as Dumbledore explained to a fascinated Ron and Neville how the Mirror would only produce the Stone for someone who wanted to  _get_ it but not actually  _use_  it. It sounded clever, hiding the Stone in the mirror, a perfect thing to tell people. Everyone would assume that they couldn't get the Stone simply because they were inadequate, but if you thought about it for a few moments... Percy was thinking of Bill and his tomb-raiding stories.  _The treasure's never in the chest - it's always somewhere else, and the chest is booby-trapped_. There might've been a fake, perhaps, in case anyone managed to show really impressive levels of selflessness, but - "No," said Percy, drawing everyone's attention again, "it wasn't there  _at all,_  was it!"

Ron looked taken aback. "What?"

Dumbledore raised a curious eyebrow, clearly wondering how Percy had figured this out. Percy, his theory confirmed, exploded indignantly. " _That's_ why you and McGonagall kept telling us 'oh don't worry everything's fine' even when everything was obviously not fine! It's not  _there!_ "

"Astute deduction, Mr. Weasley," said Dumbledore finally, looking mildly surprised but slightly impressed. "I hope you will accept my assurance, this time, that Nicolas Flamel's treasure is indeed much safer than it may have appeared." To Percy's distinct outrage, he smiled benignly. "But you have still won a great victory, for all that the prize you fought for did not exist. Voldemort has been beaten back."

"But he's still out there," said Neville, rather quietly. "He could still come back."

Dumbledore nodded gravely. "Indeed," he said, "but if he should try again, and be beaten back again, and yet again, perhaps he never shall."

Percy made a face. "Fine," he said darkly, "but next time I'm not doing it."

To his great annoyance, Dumbledore just smiled at him, and said, "No one can force you to be a hero, Mr. Weasley," and then drifted away.

* * *

_June 11, 1992_

_(letter delivered by Muggle post)_

> _To Hermione Granger_
> 
> _Hope this gets to you. I dunno how Muggle post works, I'm having Dean deliver this._
> 
> _On behalf of all the first-year Gryffindors, but especially on behalf of me, because I was the worst:_
> 
> _We were stupid and awful._
> 
> _We're sorry._
> 
> _\- Ron Weasley_


End file.
